Sunday, 28 July 2024

Deadpool & Wolverine

So, guys, we've officially reached the most anticipated M.C.U movie since Spider-Man: No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine. Even though I've personally enjoyed some of the other movies to certain degrees, this is the one that was being built up to be the one to pull the M.C.U back to the way it was and I mean that from the advertising and other rumours, not to mention this was the first time we'd properly see Ryan Reynolds's Deadpool and Hugh Jackman's Wolverine were gonna appear on screen together with Logan finally wearing his comic accurate suit. With that, me and a bunch of other people were so excited for this. And so, I've actually seen it twice now, and that right there should tell you exactly how I felt about this because I thought this movie was absolutely incredible. There's so much I want to talk about this movie and I am so excited to. Also, like always, this'll have no spoilers for the first part, and then I'll talk about all the spoilers afterwards. So, what's the story? Wade has given up being Deadpool and is now trying to get a normal job like everyone else while still trying to spend time with everyone, but, after the TVA comes and warns him about his universe being in danger, he starts a journey with a new version of Logan to try to save it while being hunted by a new villain named Cassandra Nova, played by Emma Corrin. So, before I get into the review of the film there's something I want to say. This movie was directed by Shawn Levy, who made a movie called The Adam Project back in 2022, which also starred Ryan Reynolds, and I've sorta believed that ever since the first Deadpool movie came out, a lot of movies have tried to capture the feel of that movie and replicate it. The reason I say that is because since Shawn Levy made The Adam Project and it felt sorta similar to the first Deadpool movie, that was gonna carry over greatly into this movie because it feels just like the others, but this is also the first time we're seeing Deadpool in the M.C.U, which is super awesome, but it's done in a very respectful way as well. Like I said, there's so much to talk about with this film, it's hard to know where to even begin. For starters, as with any Deadpool movie, this film is hilarious and this might be the funniest of the movies. Not only does it break the fourth wall a lot and make comments on different things in the world, but they also make fun of the M.C.U and recent events too, which was super funny and refreshing in a weird way. The action as well is phenomenal in this and this honestly has my favourite action in all these movies. Sure, the action in the other Deadpool movies were great too, but this movie really takes it to another level and even pretty adrenaline pumping. We've only seen pieces of it in the trailers, but the R rating makes these scenes so fun and satisfying to watch.  Another aspect that made those scenes so incredible was the songs and music. The songs and music were great in the last two as well, but the songs they chose for this film and how they edited the scenes with them just enhanced those so fantastic. But, of course, the main reason everyone wants to see this movie is to see Hugh Jackman back as Wolverine and see the two of them interact and I can say, it's everything we've wanted to see and more. The chemistry Ryan and Hugh have is on full display and we see it for so much of the time, and seeing Logan in the costume is just as amazing as you'd hope for. Not only that, but I think this might be the best performances both these actors have given for these characters as well, and it's not just them, everyone involved is great as well, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Karan Soni and everyone else does a great job too. On that too, I also feel like Emma Corrin did a great job as Cassandra and that she could go on to be one of the best M.C.U villains, or at least one of its most underrated. The other thing everyone wanted to see in this was the whole Multiverse concept, which meant a ton of cameos were going to appear and all of them are funny, all are likeable and all are just as mind blowing as the ones in No Way Home and Multiverse Of Madness. There are some that are kinda obvious, but there's some that I just didn't see coming and some were the result of taking advantage of a lot of Marvel movies in the past in clever ways, it was just a dream come true. But even beyond the awesome action scenes and hilarious jokes, the film does also take the time for some serious moments when it needs to. Obviously the stuff for that for Wade himself is done in his level and his standards, but the other serious stuff with Logan is also handled well when it needs to be there. Really, this whole film just felt like the ultimate love letter for this character. While I said I've enjoyed a lot of the other M.C.U movies to various degrees over the last few years, this one is the first one in a while that felt like you could feel the love and passion every single person involved put into this and you could that in every frame and it really does leap off the screen, and a big help with that is that Disney allowed them to do whatever they wanted and that's exactly what we wanted to see. And given how it's not only the first Deadpool movie set in the M.C.U, but also the first R rated one that Disney allowed them to do for the first time ever, that again just helps them deliver what they wanted and what we wanted to see and it just made me so happy to see so much of this on screen. It's also just great to see this continue on Hugh Jackman's work as Wolverine since he's been with this character for over 24 years so having him back as the most accurate version of this character makes his return even crazier. If there was one thing I didn't necessarily like about the film, the first few minutes of the film are kinda slow. After the opening credits with that incredible action scene, there's then a whole sequence that goes on for a few minutes and, it wasn't bad, it had some really funny moments and I could definitely tell what it was doing and what it was setting up, but I felt like it went on for a bit too long and it was the one part of the movie where I wanted the pacing to go a bit faster. The movie itself is extremely fast paced, but that's the one part where I wish they didn't stick with it for too long. However, after that part the rest of the film delivers exactly what we're looking for, so it's not a big deal, especially since it's not like it was bad at all, it still gave us some nice moments. Overall, I really don't know what to say about this film, it's just exactly what everyone wanted and so much more. I was super vague here, but I really do want to talk about it properly in the spoiler section because of how much there is to talk about. So, yeah, this is absolutely a film I would highly recommend, it was just amazing and I can't wait to see it again. It just feels great to see an M.C.U movie that the entire world is excited for again and getting super hyped about. And so, everyone, those were my thoughts on Deadpool & Wolverine. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think. Okay, now we're gonna get into the spoilers, if you don't want anything spoiled, go see the film and then come back and read the rest of this.
Spoilers:
Okay, so, like I said, there's a lot to talk about with this movie, so I'm just gonna go from the start to the end giving my thoughts on each thing. For one, like I said, that opening action scene was amazing with Deadpool using Logan's skeleton to kill all those TVA agents, and like I said, the music made that even more awesome with that Bye, Bye, Bye song, and like I said, a lot of those scenes were really adrenaline pumping. But, like I said, after that, everything sorta slows down for a few minutes. I did love seeing Happy though, that was incredible. Seeing Jon Favereau and Ryan Reyonds interacting was amazing. But then the next part with the job scene and the birthday section I felt went on for a few minutes too long and didn't hold my interest that much. Thankfully, again, it's not too long and we get back into it when the TVA agents arrive. As for that Paradox guy, I guess he was fine as a secondary villain, I mean, there's not really anything to him, but the actor did a good job anyway. Plus, that then leads us to Wade trying to find another variant of Logan and that was another insane thing to see, especially seeing as we got to see Henry Cavill as Logan too, which is something people have been talking about for a long time now. The one where we see another Logan fighting Hulk was another awesome moment, especially since they recreated that iconic Wolverine vs. Hulk comic cover. But then we meet the main Logan of the film and everything just keeps going up from there. For one, again, seeing the comic accurate suit was great to see, but then Paradox sends them to the Void and everything just gets crazier from there with seeing so many incredible and mind blowing cameos. For one, the part where we see Chris Evans again was amazing and it was an ingenious to have that fake out with us thinking it was a variant of Cap, only to find it was Chris's version of Johnny from the original Fantastic 4 movies and the eventually resolution of that scene was hilarious, especially since we got cameos from villains from the other X-Men movies. That then leads to the introduction of Cassandra and, again that whole scene was cool and funny at parts and also super gory like when she kills Johnny. This then leads to Wade and Logan on the road together for a while and this is where you can really feel Ryan Reyonds and Hugh Jackman's chemistry on the screen because of how well they interact with each other for the next while and how long it goes on. Seeing Nicepool and Dogpool was also hilarious and a great set up for later on. But that then leads to the fight in the car and that scene was awesome, the choreography was insane, the way it was shot was fantastic and I also found it to be super funny, but also kinda sad at the same time with the reason why Logan was angry and sad. But then, probably the most insane scene in the film happens where we see even more cameos like Jennifer Garner's Elektra, Wesley Snipes's Blade and Channing Tatum's Gambit. I can't even begin to explain how mind blowing this section was. I guess Elecktra was sorta obvious with her already being in a FOX movie like Johnny was, but them not only finally bringing in Channing Tatum as Gambit after that movie got delayed over and over and over until it was eventually cancelled and having that be a joke in the movie, and then them bringing in Wesley Snipes as Blade again after twenty years was another part that was absolutely insane, especially since his movies weren't even FOX movies to begin with. We then see Dafne Keen as Laura return after seven years and she was also great to see back as well. The eventual reveal of what happened to Logan is revealed here and it's a whole lot different than what I was expecting. I thought it was gonna be that he killed the X-Men by accident like in the Old Man Logan story, but what we got here was still good and made sense for his character. The reveal that Pyro was actually working for Paradox was something that I feel was sorta meant as a joke because, it wasn't bad by itself, but it was definitely one of the less interesting parts. But it then gets crazy again when we see Deadpool, Wolverine and the others begin their attack on Cassandra's hideout with some really brutal attacks being used over and over, and it made it even better seeing some of these abilities we haven't seen in a long while be done with modern technology. This then leads to Logan managing to convince Cassandra to take them back and I was sorta wondering if she was gonn have some sort of redemption, but I'm almost kinda glad she didn't because it led to a really awesome scene. For one, we get, maybe, my favourite scene in the whole movie next when all the Deadpool variants come out, Deadpool makes fun of the M.C.U not handling the Multiverse Saga properly and Nicepool is killed in a super gruesome and hilarious way, which leads to Wade and Logan teaming up to fight all variants and we finally get to see Wolverine with his mask on. I'm telling ya, when that happened, me and my entire theatre just went nuts, just seeing Hugh Jackman's Wolverine finally have the suit and mask on for the first time ever. I mean, yeah, you could absolutely tell it was 100% C.G.I, but it was still a really awesome moment, and, like I said, the music and songs really help enhance these scenes a great deal and made it super silly, but also incredibly epic at the same time. But then it kept going when Wade and Logan had to team up again to destroy that Time Ripper and that scene was definitely more awesome than funny, but it was super funny too. Then the last few minutes with Wade and Logan talking and then seeing more of the characters together was nice too. So, overall guys, this movie was just absolutely incredible to me and everything I could have asked for. Me and so many other people were super hyped for this and it absolutely lived up to it. Like I said, I've seen this movie twice already and I'm so excited to see it again. And so, yeah, everyone, that's my review of Deadpool & Wolverine. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think.

Wednesday, 24 July 2024

Deadpool & Wolverine Final Trailer

So, with Deadpool & Wolverine coming out tomorrow, we got the final trailer for it a few days ago. With this, we got a bunch of crazy new reveals like some new cameos, the biggest of which being X-23, which is insane because we have Dafne Keen back from Logan after 7 year since that came out, so having her back is awesome and, who knows. we may end up seeing her in her yellow suit like how we're seeing Hugh Jackman's Wolverine in his. In terms of the contents in the trailer itself, it honestly doesn't focus too much on comedy and jokes in this one, but moreso on the actual plot, which is pretty cool and, overall, I'm just so unbelieveably excited for this. We haven't seen an M.C.U film get this hyped up since Spider-Man: No Way Home, and I'm so excite for this in just two days. And so, here it is and I hope you all like this.

Monday, 22 April 2024

Deadpool & Wolverine trailers

So guys, I've been kinda late talking about this, but, back in February, we got the first trailer for Deadpool 3, which was titled Deadpool & Wolverine. We've known for a while now that Hugh Jackman was going to be returning as Wolverine in the third Deadpool movie and a bunch of new photos and teasers were showing this, but we then got a trailer for it and it was incredible with showing the TVA appearing to Wade in his apartment and him killing a bunch of them in a new suit. Speaking of, we also got a lot of moments showing just how much they're really trying to push this film to be the first R-rated M.C.U movie with so much gore and language and it looks incredible. We then got a quick flash of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine in the classic suit and it was all amazing. Today however, we got the second trailer for it and it's just as amazing. We get to see more moments of Wade and Logan interacting off each other and it's a lot of fun, and they're really trying to sell this joke of how they're fighting each other in front of the 20th Century Fox logo given everything that's going on now and I'm loving it. We also get to see Logan in the suit with the sleeves missing like in the comics, which helps make it even more accurate and how they're showing this, with more great performances from Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman makes me feel like this could be the best M.C.U project since No Way Home. I just couldn't be more excited for this and I can't wait to make my review of it once it comes out. And so, here they are and I hope you all like these.

Thursday, 21 March 2024

My tribute to Akira Toriyama

So, yes, I'm so unbelievebly late with posting this on here and I apologise for that, but, yeah, about two weeks ago, it was announced that Akira Toriyama, the creator of the Dragon Ball franchise passed away at the age of 68. This was obviously absolutely horrible, horrible news when it was announced because Akira Toriyama really create easily the most popular anime and manga franchise of all time with the Dragon Ball franchise and there's no way it would be the way it is right now without it. Dragon Ball has helped inspire so many other amazing works like One Piece, Naruto, Bleach and so on. I mean, I've personally been a fan of Dragon Ball ever since I got into it back in 2017 and I've been a huge fan ever since. Apparently the cause of death was some kind of bleeding in his head and it's even more sad when you realise he was still fairly young because 68 isn't really old at all. And the fact that there was clearly more things in the franchise left, especially Dragon Ball Daima that's coming out this year, will be more tragic to watch since it was the last thing he ever worked on. Anyway, when it happened, I made this tribute video for him. Here it is and rest in peace, Akira Toriyama and thank you for everything.

Saturday, 2 March 2024

My Alphonse Elric collectible (Review)

So, this is one I've sorta been working on for a while, but, last year, I finally managed to get a collectible for the other Elric brother after Ed, Alphonse. Ed's collectible was one of the first I ever got and so it was great to get one of his brother as well. In terms of other Fullmetal Alchemist characters, I don't know if I'll get anymore after these two, but I'm super glad to have the two of them since I love both characters and I still see them as the best sibling pair in anime and manga. It was also cool just to have Al as a figure since we got a good look at his design since he's a suit of armour for the whole series and how they it with this is really cool, not to mention the fact that I do love Al as a character and so having him is just great to have. Anyway, here it is and I hope you all like this.

Thursday, 22 February 2024

My Dio collectible (Review)

So, I'm definitely super late posting this again. I haven't posted anything about any new collectibles I've gotten in ages, even though the last one I posted on here was my Jolyne one and that was posted onto YouTube a year ago and so is this one. Along with getting her, I also got one for Dio. A while back, I finally managed to get ones for all the main JoJo's in the first JoJo universe and so I'll be posting them soon. Like I said, I've gotten plenty more since last year and so I'm hoping to make posts about them sooner. I know I haven't posted much lately, but I'm hoping to make up for it with the collectible videos I've been making over the last year. It was cool to get one for the main villain of the whole franchise, especially in his Stardust Crusaders appearance. And so, here it is and I hope you all like this.

Thursday, 8 February 2024

My top 5 movies of 2023

So guys, I'm kinda late with this, but I'm here to talk about my top 5 favourite movies of 2023. 2023 was sorta similar to 2022 is the sense that I tried to see more different kinds of movies and I did end up seeing some differents types of films. A few of them didn't make it on here, but there were some that I saw that were different and really good and some that I know are really good and wanted to see like Wonka that I didn't get a chance to see yet. There's also a few different kinds of movies that are coming out this year that I'm really excited for. But, for now, I'm gonna talk about the five movies I liked the most from 2023. And so, let's get into it and I hope you all like this.
5. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Theives: 
Starting us off at number 5 is a film I never mentioned before until now, but one that I thought was a lot of fun, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Amoung Theieves. I saw this film in April with my friend because he was curious to check this out and the premise looked fun and interesting and we both ended up really liking it. This is a film adaption of the actual Dungeons & Dragons game and it follows a group of characters in this fantasy world trying to break into a castle to steal back some stuff and save the daughter of the main character. The trailers made this seem like something that was gonna be similar to Guardians Of The Galaxy, and, in the end, that's exactly what it ended up being like. My friend and I both agreed it felt very much like Guardians Of The Galaxy and what I thought was kinda refreshing from the film was that it was a movie where you could just kinda turn your brain off because it never really takes itself seriously and that was super refreshing. It's mostly focused on telling a fun story and telling a lot of jokes and that's exactly what we get. The cast in it all do a good job at selling this obscure world that's also just meant to be a fun time and I appreciated that too.
4. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3:
Speaking of the Guardians, next up is the only M.C.U film on here and one of its highlights from the year, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3. While not everything from the M.C.U in 2023 was well liked, we did a fair amount of good content from it and Guardians 3 was definitely one of them. And, again, while not the best of the Guardians films, we still got some of the best M.C.U content from it in years. Guardians 3 gave us the darkest film from the group and we got to explore more from the characters, especially Rocket and we got some many dramatic moments as well as the same amazing James Gunn comedy you'd expect. It was also just bittersweet since it's implied that this might be the last time we see them all together like this. And Gunn did a great job sending them all in a loving way and that's what I liked the most. The fact that it felt like there was so much love put into making this as much as possible and you can really feel that from watching it.
3. The Flash:
At number 3 is probably the most underrated comic book movie in a long time, The Flash. Being the very first time we finally got a live action Flash movie, we finally got one as one of the last DC.E.U movies before James Gunn starts his own DC cinematic universe. And while this film probably wasn't as good as something like Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 and that film is probably better and better made, I think I actually enjoyed The Flash a bit more. We got to see a lot of fun and funny moments throughout the whole film and everyone in the cast does a really great job. I honestly this was the best way to do a Flash movie in the DC.E.U. I love how it played with the multiverse concept and we got some really unique action scenes as well and it was just super fun to watch from start to finish, especially by bringing back old characters like Michael Keaton's Batman and so on. I just really, really enjoyed this film and I honestly believe this could make its way into being one of my favourite comic book movies ever. 
2. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse: 
Coming in close to number 1 is the best animated film from 2023, the best comic book from from the sequel to one of the best comic book films ever, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. I can only imagine how hard making a seuqel to Into The Spider-Verse must have been considering how absolutely amazing the first movie is, and while they didn't necessarily capture the same amazingness and magic as that first movie, they still did a great job with this. They managed to do the same incredibly uniqueand stunning animation, have some of the most creative action scenes ever in an animated film, fantastic cameos that felt very natural and left us off with an insanely huge cliffhanger that makes me so unbelieveably excited for Beyond The Spider-Verse. The film still has the perfect amount of heart and comedy in it that makes these movies so amazing to watch.
And my number 1 favourite movie of 2023 is... Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part
And finally at number 1 is the penultimate film in the Mission Impossible franchise and another Tom Cruise movie to be placed as my favourite movie in a row, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1. I've been a huge fan of these movies ever since 2017. I saw Fallout in 2018 and it was one of the best movies of that year and now the sequel to that came out last year and ended up as my favourite movie of the year. Ever since the fourth film, these movies have constantly impressed so many people, including me, with the jaw-dropping stunts, amazing action scenes and stories that are amazingly well thought out. I was wondering how they would top Fallout and, while I don't think this is as good as that film, they still did an amazing job with it with everyone in the cast being fantastic like Tom Cruise, Vin Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Hayley Atwell. Everyone does a great job and the characters are still super interesting. I think this film might have the best opening scene I've seen anything in a while in the airport and everything in that scene is amazing along with the car chase scene, the alleyway fight scene, the final scene on the train, just every single action scene in this is so clever, so amazingly shot and the choreography in these scenes is truely something that needs to be seen to be believed. I'm so hyped for Part 2 and that could end up being my favourite movie of this year. And all that is why Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 is my favourite movie of 2023. And so everyone, those are my picks for my top 5 movies of 2023. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think and tell me what your favourite movies of 2023 are.

Saturday, 13 January 2024

The Promised Neverland (Review)

So guys, this is another really interesting entry for me to make because I decided to finally make a review for the manga and anime series, The Promised Neverland. I say this is interesting because normally I do just anime reviews on here, especially ones that are adaptations of different mangas, but, for this occasion, I've decided to make a review for the anime, but especially for the manga. If you don't know, the anime for this series is in a weird space with what they did with it after Season 1. I'll get into that later, but, for now, I'm just gonna talk about the first part of the series and a summary of the entire story. So, The Promised Neverland is another Shonen Jump series that was created in 2016 and finished in 2020. It only has 20 volumes, which means it's one of the shortest manga series I've ever read. It was created and written by Kaiu Shirai and illustrated by Posuka Demizu. I got into this series last year. I got all the manga volumes and finished it pretty quickly. Like I said, it's only 20 volumes and the volumes themselves are honestly not that long, you can read through them incredibly fast. I'm not 100% sure what it was about the series that made me want to check it out, maybe it was because it's another Shonen Jump series or maybe I just thought it looked cool, but, whatever the reason, I started and finished it last year and I absolutely loved it. This might be one of my new favourite Shonen Jump manga series of all time. Not entirely sure about that, but I did absolutely love it nonetheless. So, I'm gonna be doing a review of the whole thing from start to finish and, like always, this will have full spoilers for the whole story, so, if you don't want anything spoiled, go read or watch it and then come back and read the rest of this. So, the general plot of this series is that the beginning is set in some orphanage called Grace Field House where there's a whole bunch of kids being looked after by a woman named Isabella. The main characters of this series are three kids named Emma, Ray and Norman. They've all been there their whole lives and all live happily and are always playing with the other kids and taking tests and being loved by Isabella. They've never seen the outside world beyond the wall that surrounds the orphanage. Sometimes, they're having to say goodbye to one of their friends in the orphanage because they get adopted but never hear from them again. One night, one of the girls there named Conny gets adopted but leaves her stuffed rabbit behind and so Emma and Norman go to catch her to give it to her at the gate, but, when they get there, they find Conny's body in a truck because she's been killed and it's revealed that it was done by these demon creatures and Isabella intentionally handed her over to them and Emma and Norman put together that the orphanage is actually a harvesting ground for the demons and Isabella is handing the kids for them to eat and this completely messes with the two of them since they pretty much destroys everything they ever thought they knew and now they're trying to think of a way to get the rest of the kids out of there and escape to the outside world before anyone else dies. So, yeah, that's a pretty insane premise for a Shonen Jump series, but, at this point, what series isn't? And what I loved about the early stages of the story was the whole tense vibe that the series was going for because the series itself is a dark fantasy horror story with Emma, Ray and Norman doing everything they can to investigate what's really happening and what's the best way to escape while trying not to be discovered by Isabella. With the first five volumes of the manga, we get a whole bunch of information for the series, especially in volume 2 when another adult named Krone comes to the house and decides she want to try to kill Isabella because she wants to be the "mother" of the house because the woman who runs an orphanage is given the title of a "mother" and Krone wants to be the mother of this house. That's actually another big piece of information given, that there are multiple houses just like Grace Field and Krone, even though she doesn't really like the kids, decides to help them in order to get what she wants. So, like I said, for the first five volumes of the manga, what I absolutely loved the most was the constant planning and brilliant ideas the characters were coming up with to figure out how to escape the orphanage like when they try to train the other kids to run faster and hide too. They also do other things too like they realise they have tracking devices in their ears and so they try to figure out how to disable them. But that's not to say it doesn't have other minor things too like how we learn more of the characters personalities like how Emma, seeing as she's the main protagonist, is the more happy-go-lucky one who's always looking on the bright side of things, Norman being the clever and methodical and having a caring, friendly side to him and Ray being the more quiet and almost kinda sombre person, but is still one who cares for the others like them but still keeps everything to himself. We even get some good comedy from this too. Even though the series is super serious a lot of the time, it still knows how to be funny when it needs to be. But, the most important part is that it keeps the focus on the story and characters and it does it very well. I also love when they slowly begin to bring other into the plan as well, especially Don and Gilda, as in two kids who are their age and Emma, Ray and Norman decide to tell too. Though they never tell them that all the kids who have been adopted are actually all dead and so when Don and Gilda begin to get suspicious and find out what's really happening, they lose it and get angry at them but they all manage to compose themselves enough to realise they all need to be on the same side. But then things start to really get nuts when Krone is eventually discovered by Isabella and so she and the other demons decide to kill her and have Emma and the others killed too since they know the secrets and so Isabella decides to have Norman shipped out and Emma tries to save him but he decides to go through with it as a way to save Emma and Ray. After he's sent off, and after he has a quick chat with Emma, Emma and Ray act like they've given up on trying to escape, but they've actually got two separate plans going because Ray decides to kill himself on his birthday, because the smarter kids don't get sent out until they're about 12, and so he decides to do it but Emma manages to stop him and reveals how the other kids all now know what's going on and they've all agreed to escape and save Ray and so we get a whole lot of crazy things happening that night like Ray almost killing himself but Emma saving him like I mentioned and they manage to trick Isabella by having Emma cut her own ear off where her tracking device is and Ray's as well and so all the kids that are 5 years old or over and now going to escape and leave the younger kids who can't walk at all or run fast and come back for them. So, Emma, Ray, Don, Gilda and the other kids manage to escape and that whole I've been talking about up until now takes up the first five volumes of the manga and the first season of the anime. So, in terms of just this segment of the story alone, it's honestly brilliant. I think the structure of everything is so well thought out and how they do all sorts of different reveals and have twists and turns is amazingly thought out and how they show each one is so smart, every single one of them. I love how they, not only show the different ways all the characters think of each of these schemes while Isabella is hot on their heels the whole time and it feels like they could be discovered any moments and be fed to the demons, but also show all the character's different personalities along the way too. Like I said, Emma is like a lot of other Shonen Jump protagonists with being super cheerful and happy and optimistic, Norman being smarter and more careful with how he plans things out and Ray being super secretive and quiet but still doing whatever it takes to keep the others safe. But it's not just them, we also have Don who's a bit more of a hot-headed but still being able to think things through carefully and cleverly and Gilda being the more kind and gentle one who's still worried about everything that's happening. And just all the other small things that happen are crazy too like when Krone dies or when Isabella breaks Emma's leg or when Norman discovers the fact that the wall around them has a gigantic gap between their side and the one leading to the outside world.  We even learn other smaller twists in this part too like how Ray is actually Isabella's actual son. Honestly, everything that happens up until now was all enough to get me super intrigued into the series and I was really excited to see where the rest would take the story. And everything honestly just keeps getting better and better from this point because, even though I really enjoyed all the stuff at Grace Field House, everything that happens after they leave is really great as well. Not only are they leaving to escape and find out the secrets of the world and what really happened to make the world the way it is, but they're also trying to meet someone named Minerva because they found a bunch of books in the library that have his name in them and so they feel like he was trying to send them and a message. So, as they're all leaving, they get pursued by some other demons which leads to Emma falling unconscious due to blood loss because her ear was cut off but then all of them get saved by some other demons who don't eat humans at all and are willing to help them. There's two of them and their names are Sonju and Mujika and from them we learn a whole lot more information about the story that's really vital to the plot. The main thing is that they tell Emma and Ray that the reason the world is like this is because there was a promise made 1000 years ago made by humans and demons to do these harvesting of human children to give to the demons because they wanted to stop the constant fighting and killing that was happening and that there's two separate worlds, the demon world and human world and that they're in the demon world. This was all stuff was insane to read about the first time I read it, and, I'm not gonna lie, when I was going through it, even though Sonju and Mujika were saying they didn't want to eat any of them and were acting pretty friendly, I was expecting them to do something to them all at some point, but they never did, they genuinely really wanted to help and be friendly and they ended up being some of my favourite characters in the whole series. Anyway, they also teach them different techniques too like Sonju teaches Emma how to hunt and Mujika even gives Emma some amulet that she says will help her. They then leave again to find the location of some place that they believe Minerva is leading them to and so they eventually get there and it's some underground bunker and find that there's only one random person there. He doesn't tell them who he is but he explains how he's been there for many years and that he came from a similar place as them but all the people he was with were all killed so it's just been him on his own all this time. This is something I found really interesting about this series because as the plot kept getting more reveals like this, I was really interested to know what exactly was gonna happen and how it was gonna happen, especially with this new guy being introduced, and I had heard this guy was actually a lot of people's favourite character and this is another example of there being a huge difference from the manga to the anime because this part right here in the anime is where things change dramatically because for some reason, they decided to cut this guy out from the anime entirely and we never see him at all which means there's a lot of the upcoming stuff not in the anime at all. Like everyone else, I have absolutely no idea what they were thinking with removing him from the anime because him being absent not only means that one of the best characters in the series is gone, but it also means that the upcoming parts of the story in the manga is completely cut out entirely, which is a terrible idea because the upcoming parts in the manga are some of the best parts of the entire story. Anyway, when they meet him, he says he wants them to leave so they don't deplenish all the food and other things in the bunker he wants for himself and he even threatens to kill Emma if they don't but she manages to stop him and they tie him down so he doesn't hurt anyone. They then find a letter from Minerva telling them they have the option to either stay there or go to another location for more stuff and so Emma and Ray decide to go to this location alone but they also decide to bring the man with them in case he hurts the other kids. This part here actually kinda introduced a kinda dark moment for Emma because she basically threatens the man saying that unless he helps them get to this place, they'll blow up the bunker seeing as he's so desperate to keep it for himself. So, the three of them leave to find this other place, and even Gilda threatens the guy by saying the same thing as Emma, but saying that unless one of them comes back with him, she'll blow it up herself. On the way though, the three of them get attacked by more demon monsters that act like animals, not like the other demons they saw before who look different but still act, more or less, like humans. This then leads to Emma getting captured by other demons and taken away after her and the guy were having a talk about how he escaped where he was originally. Emma then finds herself in this kind of amusement park place and it's revealed to be some place called Goldy Pond, which is where some other demons pay to get kids to be brought there and they hunt them for fun. She meets other kids while there and learns just how dangerous it is because some of the kids she meets there are killed and this resolve that she has makes the kids she meets there take her to meet another man they know who's been there for a long, long time named Lucas and what's really cool about him is that he's one of the other man's friends because this is the place the other guy was mentioning. The two of them were there together but the other guy was able to escape but all their other friends were killed so the two of them were the only survivors. Lucas also shows Emma a door there that he believes was left there by Minerva and Emma is able to open it due to the special pen she has with her. When they open it, they find an actual small golden pond with a tiny island on it and an elevator on it and so they think it could lead them to the human world but then they hear a recording on a phone from Minerva himself saying that his real name is James Ratri and that he created the elevators to take people to the human world if they wanted but that this one is closed and can't be used. He then explains that his brother named Peter Ratri betrayed him years ago and tried to get him killed because James himself was trying to save everyone while Peter was trying to kill everyone since they're descendants of the family that made the original promise. Not only that, but he then explains how there are other ways to get to the human world and they're actually in the different orphanages, just like Grace Fields House. That was a major turning point when I read it because, even though it was obvious that Emma and the rest were gonna have to go back there at some point since they still need to get the rest of the kids and so on, the fact that this place was also being set up as the place where the final fight was gonna be happening made it really intense and awesome. Emma also not only learns all this information, but that one of the kids named Adam keeps saying some numbers that are actually the same numbers that Norman had on his neck. I didn't mention that yet but every Grace Field House kid had a bunch of numbers tattooed onto their necks as a way to label them and, I think the idea is that we were supposed to believe that Adam was actually Norman but just enhanced to be this giant kid that we see but then it's revealed that Adam saw Norman at some facility he was being taken to the night he was supposed to have been killed, so this gives Emma hope that he's still alive. This then leads to a really awesome action scene where Emma teams up with the kids there to try to kill the demons there because they discover that shooting their eyes is what kills them and so we get a whole action scene where everyone tries to kill them and it goes well for the most part except when there's one demon who's insanely the leader and is harder to hit named Leuvis. Not only is he insanely tough to kill, but he also almost kills Emma by stabbing her and she's almost killed but then Ray and the other guy arrive and they all team up to take him down. This is also where he and Lucas reunite after all this time and that was a really nice moment as well. They then agree to take everyone back to the shelter and the man decides to take Emma back himself to save her and so he does and we even learn his name here, it's Yugo, which is insane, but incredibly awesome. So, I really wanna talk about that part, a lot of people consider the whole stuff at Goldy Pond to be maybe the best part of the whole story and, while I'm not sure if I can necessarily agree, I do agree that it's an amazing part anyway. Not just for the cool action scenes and new lore we learn, but also just in terms of character development too and learning more about different characters and their motivations like learning who Yugo is and his history of being at Goldy Pond before and now having to go back and learning his lesson along the way, it just made for a really interesting and cool character. Not to mention Lucas joined them too and they now have two adults on their side too which made a lot of this even more exciting for what could happen next. And what does happen next is insane and pretty tragic again as well. Everyone tries to decide what to do now and Emma decides to go to this supposed demon god who helped create the promise that was made over 1000 years ago and make a new promise to hopefully keep everyone safe and go to the human world. So Emma, Ray, Don and Gilda decide to go to some place that they found in some books about this place that looks like a dragon's eye if you look at this in a certain way and  when they're there, Emma gets this vision where she's somehow with the demon god they're trying to find and he says that they need to find him for real if they really want to talk to him. They then decide to go to this town where demons live and they're able to disguise themselves as demons and they find this temple that has pictures on the ceilings to that tell them where something called the Seven Walls are and so they decide to go to this place and this is where the tragic stuff really begins because one of Peter Ratri's men, Andrew, finds them along with his men and they decide to just kill everyone and this leads to another super tense moment where they have to evade Andrew and his men while trying to escape and you grow to really hate this guy because he's basically trying to kill kids because he's a psychopath. Anyway, they manage to get out but then Yugo and Lucas decide to try to keep Andrew and his men distracted and give the kids a chance to escape even though they know they're most likely gonna die and then that leads to them trying to kill every last one of them but they get hit multiple times and they're dying but Yugo manages to get to a room full of gas tanks and he shoots them to try to kill Andrew. I dunno why, but even though I probably should have expected they would die, it was still surprising to see the two of them die considering how big they were to the other characters. Plus, after they die, it was nice to have that moment where Yugo imagined reuniting with his old friends again and then they both really die. This however doesn't kill Andrew yet and he goes on an absolutely insane rampage demanding the kids to surrender and die and he even does end up killing three of the kids and is about to kill the rest but then we get a really satisfying moment where a demon comes out and kills him. This then leads to the reveal of a bunch of new characters who are some older kids who were in farms as well until this Minerva guy was able to save them and they reveal that Minerva and them have been going around to the other farms to save all the kids. Stuff like this in a manga is the kinda stuff I absolutely love, where, when a specific character or group of characters show up and sorta help expand the world more and then they become super important. I've seen that be done in a lot of different ones and it's always great to see them to see more before the story goes into bigger plots. We sorta see more characters help grow the cast bigger. In the case of these new characters, they say that Minerva sent them to find them and take them back to their base. When they get there, they see it's a gigantic tree with a whole bunch of different kids there and Emma finally finds Minerva there who it turns out is actually Norman, he's been masquerading as Minerva for a while and has been helping as many kids as he can. This is another part that changes a whole bunch of new stuff going forward, not just because Norman is finally back, but because when Emma and Ray talk to him, they learn a whole lot more information about the state everything's in. For example, he explains the reason there's different kinds of demons, as in ones that act like humans and ones that animals, is because they evolve based on what they eat, that's why they were eating children all the time, because they have to keep eating to maintain it. Not just that, but there's also this town that Emma and the others were at before where the demons live and in that town, there lives a royal family of demons and this begins a long story where Norman decides to meet with some other demons who hate the higher ups of the demons because they're getting the better food, as in the human children they're eating, and they're left tiny pieces to survive by comparison and so Norman decides to pit both sides of the demons against each other to have them try to kill each other with an invasion and then once the majority of them are dead, Norman plans on killing the last few survivors with the other kids he's met. But, Emma has sorta begun to change because she realises that demons are like people in the sense that they eat to survive and get along with each other so Emma wants to try to create a world where every living creature can get along, especially since they already know demons like that with Sonju and Mujika. This then makes Ray talk about how Sonju and Mujika were not only very intelligent, but they also didn't eat humans and actually helped them. They go to try to tell Norman this but he apparently says that Mujika is some kind of special demon who's blood is able to make other demons be like her in the sense that they don't need to eat humans to keep their intelligence. This actually starts a super, super clever plot twist that revolve around the royalty trying to make it so this stops because they have Mujika's blood in them and that's why they're so intelligent but they like how they have a grasp over ruling all the other demons and so they make it so that they can keep that control by making so the demons recognise them as royalty even though Mujika's blood is what's making them this way. But then, this is where things get extremely insane because Norman sorta becomes a villain a small bit because he wants to kill Sonju and Mujika as a way to help cause the extinction of the demon race. Emma and Ray try to argue against this though and think there's a better way to go about it and think they can make it where no one dies because they think that if they can find this demon god that Emma saw briefly before, they can make a new promise and send the humans to the human world and the demons can stay alive in the demon world and so Norman gives them a time limit because he still wants to go through with his plan but says that if they can find him and make the promise, he'll leave everyone alone. But this is where a lot of things get really extreme because Norman decides to let them do that but also let Don and Gilda try to find Sonju and Mujika to protect them, but he's really trying to find and kill them with his gang that the others met and try to have them kill them. Not only that, but Norman has also manipulated the royalty into thinking demons who want to rebel and eat the children are the ones who were attacking the farms when it was really him the whole time and that's how he's going to have them attack each other. I'm not gonna lie, stuff like this and storytelling like this is what makes me love anime and manga so much. When they have plots that are being unfolded in so many genius ways that also get me really excited whenever I see them to see where they're going. Anyway, while Emma and Ray are off to find The Seven Walls, which is where the demon god is said to be, Don and Gilda are heading off to find Sonju and Mujika and the different demon armies are coming in close to each other and we get tossed around from different perspectives. A lot of other mangas do that a lot too and this is no different. My favourite stuff is honestly everything involving what Emma and Ray are doing because they go to where the demon god is supposed to be and when they find some huge door, they go through it and find themselves at Grace Field House but it's not the real one, it's some weird illusion version that the god has created as sort a test for them and when they go in, they find some versions of Isabella and the other kids who turn into skeletons and the demon god even talks to them and they go through a door that leads them some other version of the house and this part is honestly something that's super weird and I love it. It's almost kinda supposed to be like psychological horror where all sorts of different versions of rooms appear every time they open a door and it jsut keeps getting weirder and weirder until Emma eventually figures out what's going on and says the reason this is happening is because their thoughts are creating what their seeing and so they both sorta try to imagine meeting the god but only Emma is able to do it whereas Ray gets taken back to the shelter and so Emma is the only one who's able to go see him and while with him, she discusses about making a new promise. He says he's willing to grant her wish of bringing all the humans to the human world and have it where no one will ever be able to travel between the two again, and this scene ends with him saying he wants a reward in return but we don't get to see what it is and I remember constantly wondering what it was gonna be when I read it because from how things were going, it looked as though it could have been anything bad. This is when we then check back in with Norman's group because they're still following Don and Gilda while they're trying to find Sonju and Mujika and almost all of them are hoping to kill them as soon as possible since they hate what demons have done to them and so many others but one of them who's this quiet girl actually hates them because they killed a demon who she felt was her dad because he related to her and raised her because of a sense of similarity of people thinking they were ugly but then Norman's group killed him and now she wants revenge and so she tell Don and Gilda what's going on. They eventually find Sonju and Mujika but then Norman's group ambushes them but then one of them has this seizure that a lot of them have and Mujika tries to help them despite what they were just trying to do and this is when Don and Gilda realise what Norman was up to and realise what his plan was. This is what I meant by Norman sorta becoming a villain small bit because they realise he's trying to kill every single demon and so they start heading for the city where the demon royalty is and this is when Emma returns from meeting the demon god and all of them meet up to try to stop Norman because he's already attacking the royalty with the majority of them dead along with the rebels. So, Mujika tries to save as many of the demons as she can while Emma and Ray find Norman who acts like he's super proud of what he's done but Emma is able to get through to him by calling him out knowing what's really going on in his head despite Norman trying to put up a front and act like nothing's wrong until he eventually says he doesn't want to do this anymore. I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that. I mean, I guess it is kinda nice that he isn't just acting like a bloodthirsty crazy person and actually wants to do the right thing, but how it's done, I feel like maybe there was something else that could done for this moment. But it's not like it's a problem, it's still a nice moment that Emma, Norman and Ray are able to have together and Sonju and Mujika manage to get Mujika's blood into the demons but then the queen who Norman thought was dead isn't and starts turning into this monster because she's another super special demon who starts to eat all the corpses around her and we even get a cool reveal where it turns out that Sonju is actually her brother and this leads to another super cool moment where Mujika reveals that the queen is about to die since she's eaten a bunch of corpses that have Norman's poison in them and this means it's gonna kill her. I've heard some people say that was kind of an anticlimactic way to kill her, but I thought it was awesome and really well thought out, especially when we see her mutate and see faces of everyone she's ever eaten like Krone. This is then when everyone realises that the shelter where Norman had everything set up is being attacked and everyone there is being kidnapped and so Emma, Norman, Ray and the Norman's other small gang with them go to help them while Sonju and Mujika try to get everything under control in the town. They discover everyone is being taken back to Grace Field House and so they head back there to put an end to this. This is then when we finally get to see Peter Ratri as a villain because he says he wants to create these lambda farms, which are the worst kind of farms and is where Norman freed his gang, afetr Peter discovers the queen is dead and decides to be the king of everything, and everything that happens from this point onward just shows more and more how hateable he is because he tries to get so many people killed and tries to set the Moms to kill the kids too. We even get a really cool moment where when Emma, Ray and Norman return, they see Isabella and just glare up at her, but this is where a whole bunch of incredible moments happen because the kids manage to hold Peter at gunpoint and he thinks he's outsmarted all of them by thinking the Moms are on his side, especially Isabella, but then Isabella reveals that she managed to convince the other Moms to turn against him and she mentions how proud she is of the kids and so it looks like Peter is finally defeated. Not just that, but, at the demon town where Sonju and Mujika still are, they were taken down and were about to be executed by all the other demons, but then it's revealed that Leuvis survived Goldy Pond for the same reason as the queen and he sorta has a redemption where he tells the demons there that the only reason Mujika was being hunted is because the royalty said she was dangerous and he even takes a taste of her blood to prove it's not dangerous and tell them all the royalty's original plan to control them this way so they could stay in power. This helps them get everyone then be on their side and this is what really takes Peter down but then he believes thinking that if he kills Emma, things will go his way again. Emma then has a talk with him and tries to get through to him and make him stop this and be their friend but he doesn't believe this so he then kills himself. That's another small thing I don't know how I feel about it. For one, I was clearly glad he died after everything he did, but the whole thing overall just wasn't my favourite moment in the series. Maybe I would have liked it more if he died giving a small sacrifice and maybe that one moment would have been his one act of redemption, though maybe they didn't do that because of what's about to happen. So, Isabella and the other Moms try to say that they'll redeem themselves by staying in the demon world but then the children manage to convince them that if they want to redeem themselves, then to come with them to the human world and find redemption there. Again, that part there is stuff I don't entirely know what to think of because, I get that Isabella and the other Moms are the only parent figures they've ever known, but the whole thing is again done in a way where I feel maybe there should have been a bit more talking about it, but it was still a good moment anyway and it was nice to have Isabella and the other Moms have redemptions. They then reunite with Phil and other children under 5 years old and are about to go to the place in Grace Field that's supposed to take them to the human world, but then another demon who doesn't want to give up human meat tries to attack Emma but then Isabella jumps in front of her to save her and ends up getting killed and when another demon kills that one, all the kids try to help Isabella and this is what I meant a moment again about not having Peter sacrifice himself because Isabella does it here and I liked the moment. It's nice to have Isabella's last act be an act of kindness and caring and it was generally pretty sad to see her die but also nice that she got one last moment with the kids and they all realise that they've always loved her and seen her as a true mother to them. They all then go to the portal and Emma and Mujika even get a small nice moment as they say goodbye and this whole part just leaves us wondering what kind of deal did Emma make to the demon god because we still don't know what she offered him in return. When all the kids and other Moms get taken to the human world, they start celebrating but then they realise that Emma is gone and they get worried and start thinking that Emma got taken away for the promise to happen. They then meet some men and one of them says that he's Peter's uncle and they've known that they'd come and are now looking for everyone who's been brought there and everyone is worried where Emma could be so everyone decides to dedicate everything they have to find her. We then see that Emma appeared in some snowy mountain and is found by an old man who takes her to his house but when she wakes up she doesn't remember anything. It's pretty much here where we realise that what the demon god took from Emma were her memories and so doesn't remember a single thing about what's happened to her. We then cut to two years later where everyone is still trying to find Emma and she's still living with the old man and they're in a town one day but when Emma tries to find the necklace that Mujika gave her that she just dropped, she runs into all the other kids who were in the same town at the same time and they're incredibly happy to see her, but she says she doesn't know who any of them are and so they all realise that what she had to sacrifice were her memories and Norman has a nice moment with her where he tells her what they've been doing the last two years with being able to go to school and even the technology they have here has helped the lambda kids. They then decide to help her by having them all live together even if she'll never get her memories back, they're just glad to have her back in their lives and the series ends with all of them deciding to stay in one huge house together. So, yeah guys, that really is it. I know this review might have been different compared to other anime reviews I've done before because I was talking about the manga this time, but I couldn't help it, I just really wanted to talk about this. It's like I said at the start, I can't remember what it was that made me want to check this series out in the first place, but I'm so glad I did because I absolutely love this series, it's become one of my favourite manga series of all time now. I love how even though it's not the usual Shonen Jump storytelling you'd expect, it's still done the best way it could be done. I love how this is more of a fantasy horror story, which is something I'm not used to in Shonen Jump, but I love it for that anyway. A big part of why I love it is definitely because of the characters, I love them all. My favourite was probably Emma because of just how likeable she was. I love how she's very similar to other Shonen Jump protagonists, but still has her own unique aspects to make her stand out. I think I heard somewhere that some people didn't like how she wanted to save the demons after everything they did to her, but I didn't really mind, I thought it made sense with how they did it and I think it made her more likeable. But other characters like Norman, Ray, Yugo, Sonju, Mujika, Don, Gilda and everyone else are really likeable as well. And, really, I just can't get over just how well thought out this plot is. It's like I said, storytelling like this is why I love anime and manga so much, for just how amazingly stories like this are told. Kaiu Shirai did an amazing job writing this series and Posuka Demizu's artwork is incredible. It looks very different to other artists' works and how she does everything is really incredibly thought out in terms of her designs. The anime is also something where I don't really know what to make of it. I'm not even just talking about how poorly Season 2 was handled and what they did with that whole thing, even Season 1 is kinda weirdly put together. I dunno how to explain it, but something about the atmosphere of the anime and other things about it like the editing in it and things like that make the anime kinda weird. Not bad and, overall, the first season is good, I guess, but it's nowhere near as good as the manga because I personally do feel like this is an instance where you should stick to just the manga, but the anime does have some other good aspects to it too like the dub. Erica Mendez, Jeannie Tirado and Laura Stahl are all really good as Emma, Norman and Ray and everyone else does a good job too, but the anime isn't really something I'd want to go back to. In terms of the manga, I would absolutely want to go back to this multiple times, mainly thanks to the fact that the series is only 20 volumes long, but also the fact that I love it and would love to read it again multiple times. I really don't think I can recommend this series and I would totally say that this series is very underrated. I know people like this series and some even love it, but I don't think it gets enough attention. So, yeah guys, if you've never read this series before, I would highly recommend it big time. Like I said, this has honestly now become one of my favourite manga series ever and I really can't say enough good things about it. Even if you're not that much of a manga fan, I would still say you should check this out because there's some really amazing things in it, again, especially since it's not long at all. I was able to finish it really quickly myself. And, so, everyone, that's my review of The Promised Neverland. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think.

Friday, 29 December 2023

The Boy And The Heron

So, everyone, we've arrived at the newest Studio Ghibli movie and the 24th one all together, or 23rd depending on who you ask, The Boy And The Heron. As you all know, ever since March, I've been reviewing every other Studio Ghibli movie and I was doing those in preparation for this new film and it was the very first time I ever got to see a Studio Ghibli movie in the cinemas and so I saw it on Wednesday and I was super excited, especially since the general consensus around the film was positive and people were really liking it, not to mention the fact that this was a film Hayao Miyazaki himself wrote and directed, so all that was making me extremely excited for this. And so, in the end, while I don't know if I can say I loved this film and can't say it's one of my favourite Ghibli films ever, it was still really, really, really good and a lot more complicated than I was expecting. I'll get into that later, but first, let's go over the plot. Also, I won't be doing any spoilers in this review at all. I won't even be doing a spoiler section, I'm gonna keep this review completely spoiler-free. So, the story centres on a boy named Mahito who loses his mom during a war and now his dad is taking both of them away to live somewhere else. While there, Mahito keeps running into a heron who's able to talk to him and says he needs his help and after a while, Mahito finds some old tower and once he goes inside it, he's taken to another world that sorta bridges the world of the living and the world of the dead, and, really, the rest of the film is almost kinda like a self-realisation story because Mahito is forced to learn and confront so much. And when I say so much, I do mean that because this movie is pretty long. It's over two hours long. Other Ghibli movies have been that long before, but something about this one being that long made it especially surprising, maybe just because I saw it in theatres. Anyway, before going to see the film, I was honestly expecting the film to be kinda simple, just based on the bit of advertising I saw and also just from the title, I was expecting this to be something like Kiki's Delivery Service or something like that where the film is one of those more laid-back movies, but that's not what this film is at all. This is one of those films that you really, really need to pay attention to to follow along, kinda like Howl's Moving Castle. It also has a lot of different themes in it to because we have so many things happening at once and they touch on different things, like when Mahito and his dad arrive, he has to come to grips with how much his life is changing and it's made even harder when he's thrown into this other world and having to learn different things there too because he's now having to confront all this stuff while he was just trying to do his own thing originally. That aspect of the film is something I imagine might throw some people off towards the film because it gets extremely complicated and hard to follow after a while. And when I say that, I don't really mean that in the same way as Howl's Moving Castle where I was really turned off by that film and just didn't enjoy it all that much, because I liked this one much more, but there's still a good amount of things here that definitely isn't for kids. I don't just mean the complicated story and things like that, I also just mean the fact that the film is pretty gory in some cases. I was surprised how much there was, it's nothing super extreme, but still. I also heard that the original Japanese title for the film is actually called "How Do You Live", and I think that's a much better title for the film overall because the film delves into a lot of different topics as I just mentioned and how it does some of that is done in ways I wasn't always a fan of, but I still thought it was handled very well. Again, I don't think it's handled absolutely perfectly because I was sorta losing track of things after a while, but I think once you get to the ending, it's wrapped up in a really great way. If I did have a couple of problems with the film, aside from maybe being a bit too complicated, I do also think that the film itself is maybe a bit too long as well. I'm not even talking about how some parts are a bit too hard to follow, I just mean that I did think some sequences went on a bit too long. It's like some other Ghibli films where sometimes they have moments in their films that are going really slow and how that doesn't always work. Like I said before, some of their movies do that so unbelievably well, but some, like this, have some moments or sequences that coulda been trimmed down or cut entirely. I also found some elements to be a bit predictable too. Once some characters are introduced, I was able to figure out pretty easily what their role was and I was right. But, with all that being said, I still enjoyed the majority of this film. The way the plot keeps unfolding throughout the film as we keep seeing different things and we see more of how this world works and seeing the different characters in it, it keeps getting more interesting once you get to the ending. Speaking of, the ending gets really insane and trippy as well with a lot of crazy visuals and things like that happening and that's done by some really fantastic animation. Like every other Studio Ghibli movie, the animation is some of the best hand drawn animation you'll ever see and they keep that going all throughout the film. I also enjoyed the different character interactions too. The one Mahito has with the heron and the eventual reveal with him is fun and their dynamic actually got a fair amount of laughs from the audience I was with. I personally think a lot of that is helped by the voice acting too. I saw this in the English dub and everyone involved does a great job. Luca Padovan and Robert Pattinson are really great as Mahito and the heron and other actors like Karen Fukuhara, Christian Bale, Gemma Chan, Dave Bautista, Willem DaFoe, Florence Pugh and Mark Hamill all do fantastically as well. It was also cool to see Christian Bale, Willem DaFoe and Mark Hamill in more Studio Ghibli roles since they've been in others before. So, yeah, everyone, I was just really satisfied watching this film. It was absolutely amazing to finally be able to see a brand new Studio Ghibli movie in theatres, especially since some people think we might not ever get another one again, but we'll see. But even still, just being able to see this one was an amazing experience. Even if this wasn't one of my favourite Studio Ghibli movies and I didn't really love it, I at least loved being able to go to the cinema for it and especially since I already spent this entire year reviewing all the other ones and it was an amazing experience and thank you all for reading them up to this point. I've loved doing these and talking about this and having it all lead up to this was amazing. And so, either way, I do still recommend checking this film out if you're interested. So, that's my review of The Boy And The Heron. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think.

Tuesday, 28 November 2023

Wish

So guys, we've arrived at the newest Disney Classic and probably my most anticipated in a long, long time, Wish. I mentioned before that I was so incredibly excited for this movie. I thought the trailers were really exciting and from how the story was being presented, not to mention the fact that this was technically a film being made to help celebrate the 100 year anniversary of Disney completely, all that was making me so unbelievably excited to see this. Not only that, but, last week, I actually went to the UK Leicester Square premiere of the movie and it was the very first premiere I've ever been to. Though, for about a week now, I've been hearing that critics weren't liking the film and some were saying it was kinda bad. So, I saw this film yesterday and was curious to know what my thoughts would be like, especially since the last few Disney and Pixar films like Strange World, Lightyear and Elemental have all been big disappointments to me that I personally didn't really like. So, in the end, as much as I really, really, really hate to say it, yeah, I gotta agree with the critics on this one too. I personally thought this movie wasn't good and had some really bad elements to it. I really can't stress enough just how much I hate to say that because I really did have a lot of faith in this film, but I just didn't like it. That's not to say there's nothing good in it at all and that it's terrible, I wouldn't go that far, but I thought this was pretty bad. But, let's get into the review and, like always, this will have no spoilers for the first part and then I'll get into the spoilers after a warning. So, what's the story? In a kingdom called Rosas, there's a king named Magnifico who created the kingdom a long time ago and he's also a person who's studied magic and now has the ability to grant anyone's wish once they've given it to him. One day, a teenager named Asha goes to talk to him about possibly working something out for her family, but, while there, she discovers a truth and the rest of the film is about her trying to figure out how to protect the kingdom all while she's being hunted. That's as far as I'll go in regards to the plot, but there's still a whole lot more that happens in the story overall. So, for this review, I'll go over the things I actually liked in the film first and then go into the negatives, cause there are more negatives than positives. So, like almost every other Disney film and the number 1 thing I always say is that the animation is still spectacular. But it's different here because, normally Disney tries to make everything like designs and textures look as real as possible, but they don't necessarily do that here. It reminds me a lot of Spider-Man:Into The Spider-Verse and Across The Spider-Verse and Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. It feels like it's that type of animation, but it's still done in a way where you can still tell it's Disney animation and I really appreciate that. Also, seeing as this is a film being made to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of Disney, they made a whole bunch of Disney references. And some were actually really fun to spot. As a giant Disney fan, it was fun to catch smart Easter Eggs for fans like me. That wasn't handled very well for everything, but we'll get into that later. Plus, the number 1 thing I absolutely adored about the film was the songs. I've been listening to them online for ages ever since they were revealed, and they're really amazing. Two of which have actually become two of my favourite songs ever recently and I really loved listening to them. Again, not every song is great, and, especially towards the end, they were used in "not great ways," but, again I'll get into that later. Also, with the songs being so amazing, they're helped greatly by really great voice acting, especially Ariana DeBose as Asha herself. I feel like she made Asha really likeable and I did really like Asha as a character. And, I guess the last positive I'll say is that the movie isn't really boring. Unlike movies like Strange World or Elemental, I wasn't bored to death watching this and I did at least find it entertaining despite all the bad stuff we're gonna get into, and I am weirdly happy this is the newest Disney Classic and the one celebrating the 100 year anniversary. But, with all that said, this film still has a lot of bad things in it and we're gonna get into those now. For starters, the pacing really isn't good here. It gets into the main plot really quickly. There is a bit of time before that, but it's still done extremely quickly and we quickly find out the main conflict pretty fast. I feel like Moana is a good example of where the pacing is done perfectly at the beginning to get us invested in the protagonists and their lives before the adventure kicks off, whereas here, it's done really quick and the main conflict is set up pretty fast too. That also leads to a lot of the film being really predictable and not very engaging, especially when a twist is revealed at the very beginning. Speaking of twist, the whole eventual villain reveal was not only insanely obvious, though I guess it wasn't really meant to be a surprise given the advertising, but still, that also didn't really help with the writing because, once it's revealed, the villain gets really over the top and campy and a lot of moments from that feel really forced and not done in the traditional loving Disney way, just in a really over the top and campy way. Also, some character moments and motivations felt really out of nowhere and sporadic, which also made some eventual redemption moments feel unnatural and not earned. Also, like I said, the film made a whole bunch of different Disney references, and, again, while some were really clever and fun to spot, others were really forced and shoehorned in and felt almost kinda manufactured. The comedy and humour in general also really fell flat for me. Nothing was awful, but nothing really made me laugh either, except a small moment at the end that got a small chuckle out of me, but, at the same time, there wasn't anything unintentionally cringy like in Strange World or Frozen 2, so I guess I'll give it that. The comedy also was another thing that felt kinda manufactured and felt like Disney wanted some pieces of comedy even when it felt really unnatural. Speaking of unnatural, the ending is also another one of the moments that goes really over the top and had some really dumb and cheesy moments, especially the eventual resolution to the whole thing. That might be the closest the film had to a kinda cringy moment. So, yeah, guys, overall, I was super disappointed in this movie. I was really, really holding out a lot of hope for it and really believed it was gonna be amazing, but it just wasn't good in my opinion. Weirdly enough though, again, I actually would kinda like to see it again. Even with all the bad stuff I just mentioned, a part of me does really want to see this again. Unlike some other recent Disney films like Strange World, Elemental, Lightyear and so on, this one I actually would want to see again, even if it does have a lot of bad elements in it. But, yeah, whether or not I can say I'd actually recommend this is a little tough because a part of me does want to say you should give the movie a chance, but there are still all the problems I mentioned. Honestly, I think you should just decide for yourself if this is something you'd be curious to see, but a part of me does still want to recommend it regardless. So everyone, that's my review of Wish. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think. Okay, now we're gonna get into the spoilers, if you don't want anything spoiled, go see the movie, then come back and read the rest of this.

Spoilers:

So, given all the things I listed already, I'm just gonna go through all the major stuff and give my thoughts on each part. So, when I said the pacing at the start felt rushed, I meant the fact that we get the scene of Asha going to Magnifico's palace to become one of his assistance but then she's told about the wishes kept there and then realises he's never going to grant her grandfather's wish because he think it could start a rebellion to take over Rosas and that's all what starts this whole thing. This is what I meant, that whole part went by so fast. I don't even think the first 20 minutes had gone by and we were immediately thrown into the main plot. Also, the whole idea of Magnifico getting worried about something like that about a wish like that was really weird and, while I do kinda get it, it was still really weird and the fact that that's what starts it makes it weirder. I just feel like there were better alternatives and better ways of convincing Asha that Magnifico was crazy. And, again, the fact that Asha then has that blow up with her family also felt really forced and quick. That did however lead to the This Wish song, which might be my favourite in the whole movie. And then, this whole thing leads to Asha making that wish and making a living star come down to her to help her. That part was actually kinda cool, though I don't really know how I feel about Star as a character because it felt like Disney was trying to make him out to be this huge standout character, kinda like Baymax, but I didn't really feel the same and Star doesn't really do anything that special as a character. He wasn't annoying and has some nice moments, but he's nowhere near as big of a standout character as Baymax was. This also then starts that other big problem I had, which was when the film began to become extremely cheesy and over the top and I'm talking about when Magnifico begins to go crazy after using the dark magic. The whole plot of him going crazier and crazier the more he uses it and begins to use the wishes as a means to get stronger is also a part that felt really insane and not really in a good way. This is also where the acting felt kinda off too. I usually love Chris Pine in everything I see him in, but something about his acting here felt really campy and cheesy like I was saying already. This is also what I meant by some things feeling kinda forced. The whole plot point of him getting crazier and crazier was what I meant by that with it feeling like it came out of nowhere and not being properly built up or developed. I also really didn't like the whole thing about one of Asha's friends betraying her and selling her out, that also was another aspect that felt like it was out of nowhere and was just there so it could be there and at the end when he has his redemption is what I meant by it being forced and unnatural and not earned. And all this eventually leads to the finale where Magnifico captures all of Rosas and tries to capture Star and the rest of the Wishes. Honestly, seeing as I already wasn't liking the direction of Magnifico's character and the fact that some other elements throughout were feeling kinda forced, it made it hard to get invested in this part. Speaking of the ending, this is the other thing I mentioned about how the climax was kinda dumb and cheesy, and I was referring to the fact that all of Rosas basically just all believe together to use against him as they're singing and all this eventually overpowers Magnifico and he's then trapped inside the staff he made. This is what I'm talking about, that whole part just felt really over the top and too cheesy, even if I feel like it was trying to invoke some special Disney feelings in the audience, but I don't think it really succeeded. Anyway, after he's defeated, we get the queen trying to fix everything and Asha watching as the citizens begin to do what they wanted and it looked like Star also supposedly made Asha a fairy godmother. I dunno how I feel about that. I guess that's kinda cool, but, again, just another kinda weird moment that I'm not entirely sure how I feel about. But that last scene is also when we get a whole bunch of other Disney references like the whole Peter Pan thing and, again, references like that felt kinda forced and not well executed. The last shot where we see the kingdom like the Cinederella castle opening thing for Disney was actually cool and I liked that one, though maybe because of the other references I wasn't a fan of, that part was kinda dampened for me a bit. However, I did absolutely adore the end credits where they show characters from every Disney Classic up to that point, that was really cool and I loved guessing which one they would pick for each film. So, yeah, that's pretty much it. Again, I just had so many problems with this film and was really expecting it to be spectacular, but it wasn't and am fairly saddened by how much I didn't like it in the end, even if I do strangely want to see it again. I'm curious to know what the next Disney Classic will be and whatever it is, I hope it's better and does better as well. So everyone, that's my review of Wish. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think.