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The Dragon Prince - Season 1
The Dragon Prince - Season 1
2018 | Adventure, Animation, Fantasy
Voice acting (2 more)
Animation
Story
Surprisingly good
I was bored and decided to watch an episode to see if it was any good. I was hooked. I don't like anime, I like well drawn animation and this has pretty decent art.
Each characters design is unique and matches their personality.
Fans of the Avatar animated series might like this. Its created by the same person, Aaron Ehasz and has voice actor Jack De Sena. Its a world of magic, elves and dragons. Magic that is similar to airbending skills in Avatar. I dont want to give too much away, but i can tell you theres lots of funny parts without being cheesy. Theres lots of action and cool looking fight scenes. Touching emotional and dramatic moments. Its really well written, epicly rich world building, interesting history and lore.
Theres also sort of a moral theme running throughout.. "for the greater good" So whether they are likeable or not, you can see the motivations behind each characters actions as the story progresses.
And the story is pretty awsome. Its so compelling, I had to binge watch the entire season! I cannot wait till season 2.
  
Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma
Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma
Yuto Tsukuda, Shun Saeki, Yuki Morisaki | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
I know that the anime is popular, but I haven't gotten around to watching it yet. I wasn't sure that I'd like the manga, but I grabbed volume 1 recently, and was pleasantly surprised! I had expected it to be like a textbook cookbook type of manga that gets too into the recipes and ends up being boring. However, Food Wars is a good mix and keeps the storyline light and interesting. You're not turning page after page of the same diagrammed, cutely drawn recipe. The main characters do talk their way through their cooking times, but it's not overly drawn out. Some manga series have that magical "it" factor, and some definitely don't. This one seems to have it. It's cute, funny, has a good protagonist, and everything that revolves around him on the outskirts is interesting in its own way, as well. There's enough to carry an actual story, and enough motion in the plot to keep the action moving. Volume 1 also includes the short that was originally featured in Shonen Jump, but I'm glad the details were reworked. Overall, I think it will be a cute series.
  
Batman: Hush (2019)
Batman: Hush (2019)
2019 | Action, Animation
Batman: Hush is a fantastic and beloved graphic novel - surely an easy win for Warner Bros. Animation.
Unfortunately, they don't make it easy for themselves.

Hush isn't a bad entry into the DC Animated Universe by any means. The animation style is very satisfying to watch, especially in fight scenes, verging on anime at times. It has a very striking look from start to finish.
The voice cast are mostly great, and elements of the story are really well done (Catwoman and Batman's relationship for example).

There's a large portion of Batman's rogue gallery strewn through the story, which always works well on the page, and is always delightful to see, but the format of a scripted movie doesn't really give many of them much to do.
The big thing for me was the final act - no spoilers here, but the movie pulls away pretty hard from the source material during the climax, and although it's a respectable twist that will throw fans of the novel off, it's not a scratch on what originally happens.

It's a negative for sure, but not enough of one to detract from my overall enjoyment!
  
Paprika (2006)
Paprika (2006)
2006 | Animation, Sci-Fi
9
7.7 (7 Ratings)
Movie Rating
The DC Mini was created to not only record and watch a person's dreams, but to actually enter them as well. It was created by Kosaku Tokita at the Foundation for Psychiatric Research and was meant to be a form of therapy to help people find the purpose of manic disorders and other manias such as fear or anxiety issues. But when the DC Mini is stolen and the same dream is being implanted into people while they're awake with chaotic results, then the research foundation takes it upon themselves to try and find out who is behind all of this. Tokita, along with Atsuko Chiba and Torataro Shima, are on the case. But who is Paprika and how does Detective Toshimi Konakawa fit into the equation?

Let me just start off by saying I loved this film. It is weird, it is unusual, and it's creatively original. I think those are some of the best reasons to like Paprika other than the fact that the animation is incredibly fluid and crisp and the story is quite good, but we'll come back to those points shortly. With a film like Paprika that is so complex and so good, there's a lot of key points to mention.

There seems to be so much going on in the film even though it pretty much centers around one dream and it's a dream for the ages. One of the things I love about Paprika is that whenever this dream is implanted into somebody while they're awake, they just start spitting this random gibberish that doesn't make sense until you actually see the dream and see this parade. The way this parade bleeds into not only Detective Kogawa's dream, but into the real world is also a sight within itself.

Over the years I've found that not only anime fans but fans of foreign cinema prefer to watch the film in its natural language with subtitles rather than the English dubbed version. I'm not talking about someone who just watches anime occasionally, but die hard fans. The English dubbing used to be pretty bad on a lot of anime titles, but it's either progressed quite a bit since I last watched a dubbed title or this film is an exception. I had no problems watching the English dub of Paprika. The voices all fit the characters, it was synced up well, nothing really sounded out of place. I'd actually recommend the English dub over the subtitled version. The audio, in general, was very good. The soundtrack also fit Paprika like a glove. The music during the parade dream is a perfect example of this.

The animation of Paprika is where the film really shines. Each surreal dream is illustrated beautifully and each cel of animation flows in an almost realistic fashion. It's some of the best animation I've seen in an animated film that isn't entirely CGI. The story also reeled me in since what started off as something somewhat simple wound up being more complex than what I once thought. Most of Tokita's dialogue where he's describing why he created the DC Mini and it's purposes are a huge mouthful of scientific jargon that's hard to comprehend to its full extent on the first viewing of Paprika. I got more than what I expected story-wise and I was extremely happy with that.

Paprika is an extremely well animated, intelligent, trip into one's imagination that I'd recommend to anyone. The best way I can describe the film is by saying it's kind of like Akira with a story that actually makes sense. Track this film down, whether you're a fan of animated films or not. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.