Deadly Class "Pilot" Review

Comic book fans we are living in an era where anything that's a comic book could be adapted heck i'm surprised that Santa Claus vs Nazis hasn't been adapted. Syfy have released the pilot episode for there comic book adaptation of Deadly Class so here we go.

The plot of the pilot episode is Marcus Lopez Arguello finds himself being the newest student of King's Dominion a school that pretty much teaches it's students how to kill people. Yeah in terms of plot there's really nothing in this episode but it does possibly set up something for future episodes but I will say that the set up does seem unique enough and so i'll forgive the pilot for not really having a plot but one needs to present in future episodes.

Starring in the pilot was Benedict Wong as Master Lin , Benjamin Wadsworth as Marcus Lopez Arguello , Lana Condor as Saya , María Gabriela de Faría as Maria , Luke Tennie as Willie , Liam James as Billy , Michel Duval as Chico , Taylor Hickson as Petra and Ryan Robbins as Rory. In terms of the acting for a pilot episode the acting I thought was pretty good I admit I wasn't expecting the acting to be great going into this pilot just because the acting so rarely is good in any pilot.

I'm not sure what decade this show is meant to take place there's alot seen in the show to suggest it's the eighties but I can't find anything anywhere on the internet to confirm that. This isn't a knock against the show since the comic book might very well state very clearly when the show is set but it would have been nice for them to say when it's set in the show.

SYFY did something that is so rarely done in the world of TV and that's release the pilot episode online for the world to watch. Well I say the whole world they uploaded it to there Youtube page and made sure that you can only watch it if your in America to me that defeats the point of releasing a pilot online. If your going to release a pilot online then why not make sure everyone in the world can see it since there might be people outside of America who might want to watch it.

The series is based on the comic book of the same name written by Rick Remender and published by Image Comics. As of this writing there are thirty five issues. The series is still being published on a monthly basis so it will be interesting to see if the TV series catches up to the comic book series at some point and they do catch up to each other how will they handle that fact. Since any anime fan will tell you that if an anime catches up to the manga the anime produces a filler episode so will that be the case here.

This series is not without it's comic book pedigree tho as working on this show are current Marvel darlings The Russo brothers. Now depending on where you get information  from they are either listed as the show's creators or as the show's executive producers I can tell you tho that the show was created by original created Rick Remender and Miles Orion Feldsott The Russo's are the executive producers on the show so they have very little say about what's in the show.

Even tho this show does indeed air n SYFY there's nothing science fiction about it at all. Which is odd if you think about because you'd think a show that's airing on SYFY would have some elements of science fiction in it but no there's nothing that screams science fiction in this pilot at all. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about that since like i said it does feel weird watching a show airing on SYFY but has no elements of science fiction in it but on the other hand if your watching a show on SYFY then one expects there to be some syfy elements in there.

Overall in terms of pilot episodes this one isn't that bad but it's also not that good but you guys can make your own minds up by checking the pilot out right now on the SYFY Youtube channel and if you don't live in American you can find out on "other" websites. This pilot is due to air on January 16th on SYFY so you have plenty of chances to check it out and since this is a pilot i'm not going to give this episode a rating.

Van Helsing: The London Assignment Review

Animation fans it's very rare for me to review a film that isn't feature length but here we are i've found something that is worth reviewing and yeah it's pretty freaking bad so here is my review of Van Helsing: The London Assignment don't worry if you havn't heard of it nobody has but chances are you've heared of it's live action counterpart tho.

The plot to this movie finds Van helsing and his mate Friar Carl sent to London to investigate a series of murders and find that they are connected to the mysterious Dr. Henry Jekyll. I'll admit that the plot is kind of interesting since it does have an interesting twist but then again it's set in the world of the 2004 Van Helsing movie and yes this movie is a prequel so you know right away who's going to come out on top.

Returning from the live action film is Hugh Jackman as Gabriel Van Helsing , Robbie Coltrane as Edward Hyde / Jack the Ripper , David Wenham as Friar Carl and Alun Armstrong as Cardinal Jinette. They are joined by Tress MacNeille as Queen Victoria , Tara Strong as Young Victoria and Grey DeLisle as the First Victim. The amount of talent in this film is unbelievable and what's more unbelievable is how bad Hugh Jackman's voice acting is seriously dude just stick to doing musicals and playing Wolverine.

Now even tho the live action film wasn't that good the film did make $300 million against a $160 million dollar budget. So Universal if they wanted could have made an animated sequel but for some reason they chose to make a prequel and they must have known that they didn't have enough of an interesting story because this "film" is around thirty minuets so it's know where close to feature length.

The animation for this "film" was done by Sunwoo Entertainment who have worked on a lot of impressive shows some examples include DarkWing Duck , Rugrats and Talespin. So it might surprise you when I say that the animation in this film is ok at best it's not the worst seen out there but it was quite clearly rushed since alot of the drawings look off.

I mentioned before that this was a prequel to the 2004 film and the main returning characters do look alot like there live action counterparts so the film does have that going in it's favor. However what it doesn't have going in it's favor is the fact that it falls into the same pitfalls as every prequel out there and the fact that this film came out the exact same year as the original film. So I have no idea if the plan was to always release an animated prequel which if that was the case then why not put it on the Van Helsing DVD and if you want to make a prequel don't have the Van Helsing character appear that way we have no idea where the story is going.

Just going back to what I was on about before the original film came out on May 7th 2004 this film was released on May 11th and for some reason it was left of the Van Helsing DVD. I will say that I did find the villains motivations a little of because he's being evil for the sake of trying to win a girl and that's it. If anything that's not a reason to turn to the side of evil that should be the reason why you want tot stay good heck they don't even explain why he's evil.

For the entire running time I was wondering why this film is just so bland and then the end credits rolled up and I saw the very reason why it's bland it was produced by the prince of bad movies Stephen Sommers. That right there explains so much about this movie because while it is well made and the story is interesting it's also trying to explain certain things that appear in the 2004 movie and those are the things that just don't work.

The action can at times be pretty exciting to watch but at the same time there's a lot of just plain boring action scenes as well. When the action is done well it is generally exciting to see there's lots of cool looking flips and visuals but just when it gets exciting it then becomes very generic and boring to look at.

Overall this is a very poor excuse of a "film" and yes i'm putting the word film in quotation marks because it's not even feature length so if anything it's like those half hour Scooby-Doo episodes that you find on the DVD's this "film" tho gets a 5 out of 10 from me.

I Want To Eat Your Pancreas Anime Review

Anime fans I love watching anime films since they are often the most beautiful pieces of art out there and I truly do believe that I have seen one such film and it's a film that really does have an odd title even for an anime the title is weird and so here is my review of I Want To Eat Your Pancreas.

For once i'm actually stuck on how to summarize the plot of the movie because on the surface it would seem like there really isn't a plot but I don't think that's true. Since the movie is about the friendship that blooms between a boy and a girl but it doesn't end up where you think it would tho and that makes the movie all the more surprising at least in my humble opinion.

Starring in the film is Mahiro Takasugi as Haruki , Lynn as Sakura , Yukiyo Fujii as Kyoko and Yuuma Uchida as Takahiro. Ok I have to ask what kind of stage name is Lynn like seriously of all the stage names you could pick you go with the one that makes you sound like an old English woman. I will say that the acting in the film is pretty good I really do wish I could say who the best actor in the film is but there all so good.

I said that this film is a work of art and I don't just mean in the backgrounds but I also mean in terms of the story. The story is beautifully told and it's very poignant altho they do spoil what happens to the main girl in the opening scene. The fun of it tho is discovering how we get to that spoiler  and that also makes the film more heartbreaking.

This is the first feature film for new company Studio Voln and if this is the kind of animation we can expect from them then I look forward to seeing what they can do in the future. The animation in this film is freaking top notch and at times is downright beautiful to look at with it's very detailed backgrounds and fluid animation. The one thing that lets the animation down in my opinion is the fact it doesn't look good when it comes to the more emotional scenes.

I will say that in my opinion this film is easily better then Dragon Ball Super: Broly and it's not just because this is a more emotional film. It's because this film actually takes the time to let you get to the know the characters and it doesn't bog you down with alot of backstory. In this film were told just enough information to get us through to the end of the movie and that works really freaking well.

This film is based on the novel of the same name by Yoru Sumino as well as spawning this anime film it's also spawned a manga adaptation and a live action film version (which I will cover in due course). I've not read the original novel nor the manga so I don't know if this film sticks very closely to the original story but I will say that if it does then the book will have alot of us in tears and that can only be a good thing.

One of the great things that this film does is something that I can't say because it's a spoiler and I want you guys to see this movie not knowing that much about it. I can say that this film does have a fairly solid twist which I didn't see coming again i;m not going to say what it is but it was something that really did catch me of guard I only wish that it was something we could have seen and not just heard about it.

That actually brings me to something else that I think is an issue with the film and that's the fact that despite having a nearly two hour run time the film does alot of time jumps. For me it would have made the film better if they didn't include the time jumps since that way we could grow closer to the characters and get to know them more as people and while we do indeed get to know them it would have been more effective without the time jumps but that's just my opinion.

I really do hope that more anime fans and not just myself talk about this film because it's something that I think should be talked about. I know that in the coming weeks and months that alot of anime fans will be talking about the new Broly movie and that's fair enough but I also ask that they take the time to check out this little gem and talk about it. I'm not going to say that this film is the next Your Name but in my opinion it's a film that can touch people.

Overall this is a film that I highly recommend to any anime fan regardless of what genre they normally watch it's a film that is equal parts funny and emotional. That said however it does have some dodgy looking crying scenes and it does have a lot of time jumps which do keep the film from being perfect so it gets an 8 out of 10 from me.

  

Dragon Ball Super: Broly Review

Anime fans the Dragon Ball franchise is an iconic anime franchise that's been a round for a long time and has spawned many films and a few TV shows but tho it was when the latest show Dragon Ball Super ended that made fans sad. There sadness can now come to an end tho as we now have the first film in that timeline and it's one that as you can tell by the title reintroduces a fan favorite character so here is my review of Dragon Ball Super: Broly.

To put it simply the plot of this movie is Frieza wants to show of Broly to Goku and Vegeta and so he takes him to earth. I really wish I could tell you more of what the story was but the fact is there's barely any story there to speak of other then what I just described and what makes it worse is that the original film to feature Broly actually had a decent story so we know the team working on this franchise are capable of coming up with a story.

Now i'm reviewing the original Japanese version of the film so starring in the film is Masako Nozawa as Goku , Ryō Horikawa as Vegeta , Bin Shimada as Broly and Ryūsei Nakao as Frieza. I admit it was hard for me to see this film and not hear the English voices just because those were the voices that not only myself but many others would have grown up with but the actors in this film are really good but in my eyes no one is going to top Sean Schemmel.

What really doesn't help this movie is the fact that it's so freaking boring i'm not kidding when I say this but the first twenty or minuets is just backstory and it's a backstory that we don't need. The reason why we don't need all that time dedicated to telling everyone Broly , Vegeta's and Goku's backstory is because we already know it so there's no point in retreading that ground. Heck I even found a natural end point for when that whole prolog should have ended.

Returning to do the animation for the film is Toei Animation and I have to say that for me the animation was easily one of the best things seen in the whole film that's not really saying alot but still. For me the animation is at it's best during the fight scenes which in my opinion is when it should be at it's best because this franchise in well known for having great looking fight scenes and there's some moments where they use CGI and it looks pretty good.

There is one thing that this film does better over Dragon Ball Z: Broly The Legendary Super Saiyan and that's Broly's backstory incase you don't know in that film he hated Goku just because Goku cried when he was a baby and that was here. Here tho his dad hates Vegeta because his dad sent Broly to a planet where he wasn't going to survive it's something that i'm glad they fixed because the old backstory is laughable at best.

This is the second Dragon Ball film to be written by it's original creator Akira Toriyama as well as the third film is which he personally oversaw it's production and it really does show because this feels like it's an extended arc of the show. That's not really a good thing since a movie shouldn't feel like that at all it should feel like a movie and not something that was edited together and then released to make some easy money.

If it seems like i'm being really hard on this film it's because i truly love this franchise your talking to the guy who would stay up late when he was a kid to watch the latest episode and yes I watched GT. So if i'm being hard on this film it's because i've seen what this franchise can be like when it's at it's best heck as well as seeing GT when it first aired I even saw Dragonball Evolution in cinema's and I have it on DVD so i've seen this franchise at it's best and it's worst.

Like I said in this review one of the things that this franchise was it's epic fights and in my opinion the fights in this movie are really well done. Heck i'd even go as far to say there the best thing about the whole movie and again like I said this is where the animation is at it's best because there's so much energy thrown into these sequences they come alive. They also have some really freaking cool moments thrown in as well so your not going to get bored when they happen.

Overall for me this film isn't the franchise at it's best but it's also not the franchise at it's worse either and I think that fans need to except that this film does have it's flaws and so that's why it's getting a 6 out of 10 from me.

X-Men Anime Review

For once guys I have no idea how to start an intro to this review it's something I did plan on doing last week but Aquaman and a bunch of other movies all came online and the exact same day so that meant I had to postpone this review by a week. Now tho i've seen all twelve episodes of the show and here to give you my thoughts on the show so here is my review of the anime version of X-Men.

The plot to this show is not long after the death of Jean Grey (who was being controlled by the Dark Phoenix at the time) the X-Men here consisting of Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm and Beast are tasked with finding out why there's serge in mutant activity in Northern Japan That's honestly the best way i can describe the plot since the plot of the show changes after episode which is a shame because if they didn't change the story they would have had a rather solid plot but since they changed it we have a plot that's that good.

Incase your wondering yes i'm reviewing the dubbed version of the show and incase your seeing this in Marvel only pages Marvel themselves had a hand in creating this show. Starring in the show was Scott Porter as Cyclops/Scott Summers , Steven Blum as Logan / Wolverine , the original voice for Leonardo of the TMNT as Professor X/Charles Xavier , The Flash star Danielle Nicolet as Storm/Ororo Munroe , Jennifer Hale as Jean Grey , Ali Hillis as Emma Frost and Stephanie Sheh as Armor/Hisako Ichiki.

Please note that those with Japanese names are listed as such because that's what there called in the show. As for the actual acting in the show itself it's actually pretty decent if I sound surprised that's because I am and because when I first took on the challenge of reviewing a Marvel Anime I had heard that they were pretty bad shows so i really wasn't expecting the quality of the acting to be as good as it was.

What was shocking is that given the X-Men characters that I mentioned there's a lot more who make cameo's in the final episode. I won't spoil them all but some of the characters who appear are Colossus , Rogue , Nightcrawler and most shockingly of all Deadpool. I'm not going to spoil the possibly big cameo tho since it really does depend on how you feel about that character but I can't get over the fact that Deadpool makes a cameo in this series it's just a shame it's a non speaking cameo.

The animation for this show was done by Madhouse who have worked on a tone of great anime films and TV shows so you know that the animation is going to be at a high standard and it is in this show. There's a lot of great fluid movements and backgrounds but what really bugged me and it's such a minor thing but a lot of the male characters have what looks like really shiny hair it's really distracting at times as well.

Most of us who saw X-Men: The Last Stand hated it because of the fact that it ruined a great storyline well clearly someone at madhouse loved it because of the fact that they made there version of Storm look alot like the Halle Berry. Of all the designs they could have gone with for the character they go with the one that's based of the actress that alot of people hated in those movies. I'll grant them this the design it self is pretty cool but why Halle Berry that to me makes no sense at all why not base her design of the 90's animated series version since that's still the most well known look for the character.

Incase your wondering why I chose to review this series the short answer is I didn't I held a poll for a few hours on Comics Amino asking them which of the four Marvel Anime (which consists of X-Men , Wolverine , Iron man and Blade) they wanted me to review since I was in the mood to watch one of them and they chose this one. So yeah a poll is why your seeing this review right now and after seeing the series in it's entirety I have to say I might hold more polls like that in the near future since this was an interesting series.

Marvel produced four anime under the Marvel Anime title yes they would go on to produce more shows but they exist in a different "world" to these ones. All of those shows debuted between October 2010 and September 2011 in Japan and in American between July 2011 and April 2012 with each series lasting exactly twelve episodes. What I don't get tho is why each of the shows has to take place in Japan it's not a bad idea for them to do that if it makes sense in terms of the story which it does here but still after a while that would get old fast.

What adds to the pedigree for us comic fans is that each of the series was helped by writer Warren Ellis who is also the writer for the excellent Netflix series Castlevania. Honestly there are a lot of interesting things thrown into the story like the fact we see Scott for alot of the series trying to cope with the death of Jean that to me is interesting and it's something that I don't think has been seen before and the fact that because of that he doesn't trust Emma that much despite her not even being there when Jean died.

I'm going to do something that if you've seen my anime reviews you know I never do and that's talk about the opening sequence because my god is that sequence boring. That opening doesn't do what any good opening should do and that's get you excited for the show it honestly felt like it was thrown together at the last minuet. There were times when watching this series that I considered just skipping the intro altogether and given that X-Men intros not just in Japan but in general have been really good it's disappointing that this one wasn't.

In terms of the action seen in the series I honestly really liked in heck I might even say that it was my favorite part of the whole show. They don't do your typical action scenes either since this is a group of super powered beings fighting that means that you get to see each of the main characters powers in action and that makes the action scenes look really awesome on screen.

Overall while this show is indeed good it has a lot of issues that keep it from being great and it was a great choice from the folks over at Comics Amino but if it's all the same to them i'll stick with the classic X-Men: The Animated Series this show gets a 6.5 out of 10 from me.

  

  

Some Anime Shows I Want To Review

Hello there anime fans as you might have noticed I like to review alot of things and that's because the things I want to talk about are things that havn't been talked about. Yes there is the odd new movie but it's mostly classic stuff and well I mention that because today i'm going to tell you some of the shows that I want to review at some point in the future.

My Hero Academia

When I first started thinking of shows to go on this list this show was nowhere to be found but as I started writing the intro I started to think it would be a really good show to watch. The only thing that's stopping me from doing it is the fact that there's alot of episodes per season to get through and that's very time consuming so i'll do it if they release some recap movies.

Love Live! School Idol Project

Now I do have a Love Live! review in the offing at some point in the new year but i'm also really thinking about reviewing this show. Which would make sense since I did review the movie and I plan of reviewing the Sunshine movie when that's out in the new year.

Love Live! Sunshine!!

As of right now this is the only Love Live! show that I can actually plan on reviewing since i'm getting the first season in a few weeks. I plan on reviewing it because nobody talks about the love live franchise be it good or bad so i'm going to do it just because no one else is and that is really surprising to me since it's a popular franchise.

Attack On Titan

Now that we've had a brief look in the idol genre let's dive back into the action genre because not only do I plan on reviewing Attack On Titan. I actually have a way to do it and it's so freaking simple my plan is simply this just watch the recap movies they cover all of the key episodes anyway so not only would that cut out alot of filler it would also save me a lot of freaking time.

High School DXD

I think every anime reviewer at some point has to take on this mammoth of a show the only thing that I would need to work out as how many episodes to watch. Since there's four seasons of the show and each season has twelve episodes it would be a huge task for any soul to take on. I promise you tho once I work out how many i'd need to watch and if I have the time i'll get right to it but that's a very big if.

 Blood-C

Now this is a show that I do actually plan on reviewing in the next few weeks and since I have the DVD it would be very easy to do. As with anything tho plans could change in a heartbeat so i'll say that if you see the review by next Monday then you'll know that my plans hadn't changed but if you don't see it then something came up that forced me to alter my plans.

Sword Art Online

Now this one would kind of be easy to do since there is a recap film of the first season out there. it's when we get to seasons two and three that things would get difficult to do it's not impossible by any means but i'd have to work out again how many episodes to watch in order to do the review justice but it's one that I look forward to working out and then reviewing.

Dragon Ball Z

As with a shocking amount of shows on this post the only thing that's stopping me from reviewing this show is the amount of episodes. Even if I chose to just watch the Kai series there's still a huge amount of episodes to get through and unlike a few of the shows i've already mentioned there's no recap films here to help me out. So i'd have to watch a huge amount of episodes in order to do this review any kinds of justice.

Witchblade Anime Review

Anime fans you might not know this about me but i'm a big comic book fan and if your a comic book fans you might not know this but i'm a huge anime fans. Anyway this weekend I have a few reviews planned that will combine my love of both so to start us of here is my review of Witchblade.

The plot of the series is a young woman and her daughter are cought in the cross hairs of an evil organization and have to take it down. I'll admit i've not seen this kind of plot in any anime before but at the same time it's also a very typical comic book plot. So I can't work out if the anime if paying homage to the comics by having this kind of plot or if the plot to this show very comic book like in it's nature.

Starring in the dubbed version of this show is Jamie Marchi as Masane Amaha , Carrie Savage as Rihoko Amaha , Robert McCollum as Yusuke Tozawa , Mark Stoddard as Reiji Takayama , Colleen Clinkenbeard and Reina Soho. I thought that the dubbing for this show was really well done which isn't really a surprise since it's done by Funimation and because of how well the dubbing is the action itself is also really good with each of the actors turning in a solid performance.

I would say that i'm shocked that not alot of comic book fans are talking about this but Witchblade is such a little known property anyway that it actually doesn't surprise me that not alot of people know about this show. What does set this show apart from other comic book adaptations is that it doesn't feature any of the characters or locations from the comic book it's based on instead choosing to feature new characters and shift the location from New York to Japan.

The animation for the series was done by Gonzo and I have to say that in my humble opinion the animation is one of the worst things about the series. When I say that I mean it's not good but it's also not as bad as the animation in Eiken but it's still pretty freaking bad with very limited lip movements and alot of really of drawings. To me this whole series could have been made better if the animators redrew some of there drawings.

I noticed that the main theme for this series is parenthood and how far would you go to project your kid. It's a theme that's really present in a lot of the shows episodes heck in the first two episodes it plays a part in the plot. It really is interesting seeing the character of Masane go from someone who at first can't really look after her daughter transform into someone who can look after her.

As I mentioned before this series is adapted from the comic book of the same name created by Marc Silvestri , David Wohl , Brian Haberlin , Christina Z and Michael Turner. The book was first published by Top Cow Productions from 1995 until 2015. After a two year break the series came back with a new creative team but even tho the series has never been that well known it has spawned a live action TV show , this anime , a manga , a Japanese novel and at one point there was even going to be a film based on the comic book made.  So then you could say that this is the comic book series that could because despite not being that well known it's spawned alot of fans.

As you'd expect with any comic book adaptation the original company is involved with the show altho there not that involved. Basically Top Cow's role on this show is that of a creative consultant in that they have very little to know say in what goes in the actual series they just say yes or no to certain things and that's really it.

I can't be the only one that has thought this about this show but the main character's armour is both incredibly impractical and it makes the other characters look dumb as hell. It's impractical because it projects nothing in fact she'd be safer in her normal clothes because there's no skin showing and it makes the characters look dumb because you can tell that it's Masane and it takes the minor characters a full twenty three freaking episodes for them to be told who it is. 

Yeah that's right they don't work it out they get told who it is because that armour really hides everything. Since they were pretty much only taking the lore of the comic books couldn't they have made the costume have a mask or something anything would have done since then the characters face would have been covered.

As for what i thought about the action scenes in my opinion they were the best thing about the whole series. No joke I loved every action scene that came on because they were wildly inventive and cool to look at true they weren't as good as other action anime but I thought that these scenes kicked alot of ass.

Overall this was a decent show and if that's all you want just something that's decent then this is the show for you but if your looking for something that has a little more meat to it then avoid this show. it's not as bad as Eiken in my opinion because nothing is as bad as that show but it's not a good one either so it gets a 5 out of 10 from me.