The Wind Rises

So, it's kinda been a while since I did a Studio Ghibli movie review, but I'm back to continue them with The Wind Rises. This is apparently another one of the Ghibli movies that was said to be their last movie ever, but they just kept making more afterwards. Anyway, the first time I saw this, I thought it was okay, but I did acknowledge how well made it was and how adult it was in regards to the fact that this is another more mature Ghibli movie that doesn't have that much going on, but, like so many of the other Ghibli movies I've reviewed, I rewatched it again recently and it did actually did get a bit better. I think the reason a lot of these have gotten better on the second viewing is because, when you see a movie for the first time, you're paying attention to the story and trying to follow along and understand it, and when you see it a second time, you know what's gonna happen and so you can enjoy it more and take it other great aspects about it and I think that's what it was like for me with a lot of these. So, moving onto the movie itself, I remembering first hearing about this years ago and not being all that interested like a lot of these Ghibli movies, but, these days, I'm glad I decided to finally watch it and all the others too and it's been great to see my thoughts on this one change in particular. Anyway, moving onto the story, it follows a guy in Japan named Jiro who has a dream of designing airplanes to be made. This also takes place during World War 2 and so Japan is really poor and he's trying to do what he loves with designing planes while all sorts of things happen around him like an Earthquake happens, he meets a girl and they start to fall in love and there's a whole bunch of trouble going on with the military. So, like what I've said for a few of the other Ghibli movies, this is another one that's super realistic and, not only that, but I heard this is actually based on a true story, so that's interesting. And speaking of, even though I usually don't care that much for stories like that, the way this movie does it and tells its story makes even some of the traditional stuff I'd usually find boring very interesting. Something that I think helps with that is the fact that a lot of the characters are very relatable. What I mean by that is that a lot of the movie is spent with Jiro trying to do everything he can to do what he wants to do because he has this huge dream of designing airplanes and how there's some problems going on around him but he's trying to push through to be able to keep doing it. Even though there are a lot of moments of him and the other characters having normal conversations about the state of things around them, somehow, they still manage to find a way to keep it engaging enough to be interesting. And they do it where you can also feel sorry for him in different ways too because a lot of his creations keep failing but he keeps trying to get better with the designs and make the best planes he can, and it's made even better because he's also doing it with his friend you like their relationship too since they try to help each other. It's like what I've been saying about a lot of these other Ghibli movies where, even though there's not that much going on and you're just watching people have casual conversations but they have great dialogue to make it so fascinating. I think I also appreciate the fact that they don't ignore the repercussions of the planes too because since this is set in World War 2 and it's about making planes, they explain how this could take so many lives and cause many people to die. Especially at the end when they show Jiro having a dream of planes crashing and you see him talking to someone he admires and how when he has people flying his planes, he worries since they could never come back from it and I admire the fact that they don't ignore the fact that the pilots could die and they could kill many people. So I totally give them huge respect for having it so that Jiro does do what he wants but that he also has to face the realities of it. So, in terms of that whole stuff, I liked it a lot. If there was one thing in the film I didn't like all that much, it's the romance between Jiro and the girl named Nahoko. I dunno, it wasn't terrible, but I didn't really care for that all that much and it felt kinda rush and not that earned. Maybe it had something to do with making it more faithful to whatever the true story is and so maybe that's why there was a romance at all, but, I still think it was the weakest aspect to the film. I think that also affects the runtime a bit too. I mean, the film is 2 hours and 6 minutes long and, while I give them respect for making a lot of it be involving the creation of the planes, the whole romance did make it feel like it was going on a bit too long. I will say, it was pretty tragic by the end because I'm pretty sure it's implied that Nahoko died, so it does work in that way because you do feel sorry for them. But, aside from that, I still really admire a lot of how this film played out. I love how they somehow took a concept for a movie that I'd generally think was not my thing and made it very entertaining. Again, how they address different things like Jiro's love for his work and creations really helped bring the film to life for me. Speaking of, kinda like what I said about my review for Grave Of The Fireflies, the animation helps with it too because it's a lot more realistic and so it compliments the entire movie, and they do great effects with it like the earthquake scene. The dubbing is also incredible here and, again, the fact that this is so realistic, the voice acting helps make the dialogue more interesting than I'd expect. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Jiro, Emily Blunt as Nahoko, John Krasinski as Kiro, Martin Short as Kurokawa, everyone is still just as perfectly cast as all the other Ghibli movies. Really, I just feel like this is another example of how Ghibli movies can tackle any kinda movie and make it extremely enjoyable no matter what the subject matter. So, yeah, despite this not being the traditional fantasy kinda story like most Ghibli movies tend to be, I would still say this is a great movie to check out. So, guys, that's my review for The Wind Rises. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think.

Outlaw Star (Anime Review)

So guys, after a while of not putting one of these out, I'm back making another anime review. This one being an anime I got into just a few months ago, Outlaw Star. This is another space themed anime from the nineties like something like Cowboy Bebop. But, if I'm being completely honest, I like this show a lot more. I honestly love this series. For me, this is my Cowboy Bebop. In a similar way to how people feel about that series and love so many things about it and have a great appreciation for it being a space themed anime, that's exactly what this show is for me. I've watched this show three times already and I absolutely love it. It's become one of my favourite anime's ever and I think this is a great series to be able to binge watch, especially since it's only 26 episodes long. I only found out about the series a few months ago and got curious to check it out and so I started watching it on my brother's DVD collection of the series and then I got my own Blu-Ray of the whole show and finished watching it that way. So, let's get into it and, like always, I'll be going into full spoilers so, if you don't want anything spoiled, go watch it then come back and read the rest of this. So, the plot of the series follows a guy named Gene Starwind and his partner, Jim Hawking on a planet where they run a business of fixing whatever someone wants. Gene also has a phobia of space, but that all changes when they meet a lady named Hilda who tricks them into helping her get off the planet. Not only that, but she's also being pursued by some people she stole from and she reveals she stole a girl from them named Melfina, who's actually a cyborg. They get off the planet and find a special ship that Melfina is able to operate because she's a cyborg. When they manage to get it, Hilda is killed by the people that were chasing them and Gene takes over as the captain of the ship and he calls it the Outlaw Star. They then hear about something called the Galactic Leyline, which is said to have a special treasure there. They decide to go and the rest of the series is following them on different adventures to eventually reach it. So, yeah, a bit of that does sound somewhat episodic, but, in my opinion, that's exactly what makes it so enjoyable. After the first few episodes, the majority of the series afterwards is showing them doing different things like jobs to get money to help them get to the Leyline. But the way they do them all is so fun and so entertaining. I love when an anime feels somewhat episodic but the episodes are super entertaining and they show the different things they do helps to show them getting close to what they're trying to do. I think something that helps with that is the rest of the crew they're able to get because, for the first few episodes, it's just Gene, Jim and Melfina, but they start getting more members like a Ctarl-Ctarl named Aisha, who can turn into a tiger, and an assassin named Suzuka. They join up after a while and the way they come together as a crew is a lot of fun and helps make the character dynamics even more entertaining. But, they also manage to have the plot unfold in other great ways too like when they introduce the MacDougall brothers, two of the main villains in the series with Ron being the older and smarter one and Harry being the crazy and violent younger one who's obsessed with having Melfina to himself. They encounter them at different points in the show and in different ways, the first time being when they enter a race with the Outlaw Star and lose, but they still find them and they have a really cool fight with them and then the series goes into being episodic again until episode 15, which is maybe the darkest episode in the show because it has some disturbing stuff in it. Gene is forced to fight someone but he realises he could most likely die and so this causes him to get depressed and miserable and he starts acting cold to everyone, especially Melfina when he's drunk and we get a disturbing scene with the two of them but then we see Gene at the fight and he manages to kill the guy only to see there's another one there who wants to kill him who he met earlier and so the crew decides to help him and they manage to win, but just barely and so it ends with their bond being stronger, but it was still a disturbing episode nonetheless, and how they did it was really well done. The series then keeps going as they keep doing more jobs and encounter more enemies, especially fighting the MacDougall again when they try to invade the ship, and do other things too like the episode where they help a guy get stuff from a sunken ship, or when Aisha takes part in a women's wrestling tournament or when they all get taken into custody or even some smaller stories like when Jim meets a girl on a planet and they quickly become friends but then they unknowingly fight each other in their ships which causes the girl to die and Jim is saddened with her not showing up again and so it's nice when we see someone like Jim get a story like this because, he may be really great with technology and be a great partner for Gene, but he's still a small kid and so having stories like this help us sympathise with him. But, the series begins to come to a close in episode 21 when the crew finds a planet with ruins that they think could help lead them to the Galactic Leyline and they end up fighting the MacDougall brothers again but then they're contacted by a guy named Gwen Khan, who's another one of the main villains, and this leads to an episode where Gene infiltrates a prison to find someone who can tell them where the Leyline is and so they manage to get out and he helps them find out where it is. It woulda been cool to immediately go to the Leyline from there, but then we get the funniest episode in the show where Gene and the others go to a Hot Springs planet and try to get Caster Shells, as in magical bullets for a special gun that Gene has. And this whole episode is just one gigantic laugh after another with Gene being forced to help someone in return for it while some loser idiot is after him trying to kill him but keeps failing. It's honestly one of the funniest episodes in an anime I've seen in ages. But, anyway, that then leads to the last three episodes, which serve as the finale to the whole show. This has Gene and the rest of the crew, along with the MacDougall brothers with Gwen Khan, a bunch of pirates led by a guy named Hazanko, who's basically the final villain of the show, all arrive at the Leyline and the Leyline itself sorta acts like it's alive. It teleports them to different places that meet at the same point and it even takes Melfina because, for a lot of the series, she's trying to figure out exactly what she is and why she was created, but it's revealed that she, along with the Outlaw Star itself, were created as a means of reaching the Leyline and understanding it, and she's taken to the centre of it and Gene and Harry try to get to her back. And we get another cool action scene where Harry tries to fight Hazanko but he kills him and then Ron is seriously injured. Gene then arrives and gets knocked out but Jim manages to help him and this actually helps show that this part has an amazing moment for all the main characters because Jim is helping Gene, Aisha finally gets to go all out with her power as a Ctarl-Ctarl, Suzuka fights the person who killed her family and Gene and Melfina find out more and more information about the Leyline. And this all culminates in Gene, Gwen Khan and Hazanko getting to the centre of the Leyline and getting a lot of information and Melfina has sorta merged with the Leyline and things start going crazy when Gene and Hazanko fight like when it looks like they've all been killed but are deeper inside the Leyline and Melfina explains more about the Leyline to Gene and that she can now grant him any wish. Gwen Khan was also killed after learning the information he wanted and Hazanko got all the power he wanted and Gene says he just wants him, Melfina and the rest of the crew to go back to the way things were and so they manage to get back to the ship and they begin to fight Hazanko and they manage to beat him and the series then ends with them going back to their home planet and Gene decides he wants to keep going around space doing jobs and it looks like everyone is happy and the crew decides to stay together and the series ends with them just flying off to whatever adventure is next. So, in all honesty, I love this show. Even though I'm fairly new to it, I absolutely love it and it's quickly become one of my all time favourite anime's ever. The series just has such a likeable charm to it and is so much fun from beginning to end. Even though the series is only 26 episodes long and is very episodic and feels like filler for a good amount of it, it's still done the best way it could be done and a lot of that is due to how much fun the characters are. I love all the main characters. Gene is a super likeable and fun and funny protagonist, Jim is great as a partner for him and Melfina, Aisha and Suzuka are great characters as well with Melfina being very kind and gentle and compassionate, Aisha being crazy and funny and over dramatic and Suzuka being quiet and a bit of a loner but still being really cool. I think Aisha is the funniest character in the series with being super over the top in a ton of different situations and being super over dramatic and, like I said, I love the different kinds of dynamics they all have with each other with getting on each other's nerves a lot and bickering a lot but still being great friends and having each other's backs. And, while I guess some episodes were better than others, there was never one I disliked and they all had a great charm to them. The episodic feeling to the show also helps make some side characters stand out too like Fred or even Hilda. I'll be honest, I was really surprised when Hilda died. I really thought she would be one of the main character given how integral she was in the first few episodes. The animation is also fantastic in this series. I love how colourful and bright it is and how everything really does just pop. The different way they do colours and designs makes this one of the best looking anime's I've seen in a while, especially since this was a show made back in the late nineties. I also love how even though this is an old anime from the nineties, it still holds up incredibly well. I think a good reason for that is the voice acting with the dub because it's filled with actors I've never seen in other anime's before, but they all do an amazing job. Bob Buchholz as Gene, Brianne Siddall as Jim, Emily Brown as Melfina, Lenore Zann as Aisha, Wendee Lee as Suzuka, every single one of them do an absolutely incredible job and I'm so glad this series introduced me to them all. So, overall, I am so glad I got into this series and so glad I love it the way I do. Like I said at the start, this is honestly my Cowboy Bebop. This is what I wanted that series to be and I genuinely believe this series is the better version of it, which is weirdly kinda fitting since this series actually started shortly before Cowboy Bebop did back in 1998 in Japan and they were both made by the same studio. I had an amazing time with it and I can confidently say that this is one of my favourite anime's of all time. So, yeah, guys, if you've never seen this series before, I would absolutely recommend checking this series out if you haven't. I especially think this is a great series to binge watch since it's not a long show at all. And so, yeah, guys, that's my review of Outlaw Star. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think.

Elemental

So guys, we're now at the latest Pixar movie and another one I wasn't super excited for, Elemental. This is a lot like Strange World to me where I wasn't really that interested watching the trailers or anything like that and I honestly saw on the last day of its release here. I saw it on Sunday last week and was just curious to see it, especially since, again, like Strange World, the movie was bombing pretty hard at the box office and the little bit of response I was hearing wasn't very positive. So, in the end, what did I think of it? Honestly, it's pretty mcuh the same as my thoughts on Strange World where I honestly didn't like this at all. In a way, I guess, it was somewhat better than Strange World, at least, unlike that movie, I wasn't completely bored to death. It was still pretty boring, but at least I kinda remembered the characters a bit more. But, overall, this was a pretty disappointing film for me. Also, since this has been out for over a month, I'm going full spoilers from the start, so, if you don't want anything spoiled, go see it and then come back and read this. So, what's the story? It's set in a world where the four elements are alive and have a society and in a town, there's a fire family there with a daughter named Ember. Her family owns a shop and she's hoping to take over it some day. She tries to show she's responsible enough to do it and one day when she's doing it, she causes a pipe to burst which causes a water guy named Wade to come through which starts flooding the shop and so now the two of them try to get to the bottom of what's causing a huge flood to happen. So, I will admit, some of that does some somewhat promising, I think a few elements they implement does help give the film a few cool concepts. Where it falls hard for me though is in the execution. A lot of the film was still really, really boring to me. The main problem I had with it is that the pacing was honestly pretty bad, especially at the start, it felt like the movie was really trying to get into the main plot as fast as possible and so the opening in particular felt pretty rushed. I also feel like this movie was trying to combine other Disney movies together into one like Zootropolis and The Princess And The Frog, except those movies did those plots way, way, way better, and so by feeling like other Disney movies leads to the film feeling kinda forced in its execution and being really bland. The film felt like it was going by really quick and so the relationships forming felt really forced and not earned. The main one I'm talking about is the romance between Ember and Wade. Again, it felt like it was trying to do Zootropolis in this a bit with Judy and Nick's connection, but this one felt really forced and not as well earned. The movie also has a ton of other clichéd moments like Ember and Wade trying to hide from Ember's parents and that eventually leading to them finding put and them getting mad and also Ember and Wade getting into an argument, which also felt really forced and clichéd. I mean, with everything I've said, that's not to say nothing is good in the film because the animation is of course great and actually pretty different from most Disney movies, something about how they do parts of the animation was pretty unique and cool. And the main thing I liked the most was the world because they take advantage of every cool idea you could have with a world like this. They make it so that the world feels unique and how they do a lot of those unqiue things like that makes this a world I would love to explore it. So the actual world building of the film was probably what interested me the most. However, while that is really great to me, it doesn't really make up for the rest of the movie still feeling really forced and really poorly paced. I also really don't like the ending. Like the rest of the movie, it felt forced and not earned with Ember being able to save Wade and the two of them get together. I will say, in terms of some other things that were kinda interesting, the middle of the movie actually was kinda entertaining. I mean, it had some moments I didn't like, but the middle of the movie when Ember and Wade are doing some other small things was actually not that bad and had some entertaining moments, but, for the most part, a lot of the movie just had scenes that made me care less and less and so that didn't really matter in the end. So, overall, I really didn't like this film. It gave me a lot of the same feelings as Strange World did, and while not as bad a feeling as film, still not exactly a good one either. So, yeah, I personally wouldn't want to see this again. All that being said, I honestly do have a lot of faith in Disney's next movie, Wish, which is out in November and I actually do have a lot of faith in that movie. The trailers have looked really cool so far and the animation looks incredible and the way it's being presented makes me really excited and I have a feeling this could be another big movie for Disney like Frozen was. But, as for this movie itself, I personally didn't like it and was really disappointed as a big Disney and Pixar fan. I'd only say check it out if you're curious. And as, everyone, that's my review of Elemental. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think.