Rating Some of Makoto Shinkai's Films From Great To Masterful

Makoto Shinkai is one of the best upcoming anime directors around he only has five films to his credit and he's already being called the next miyazaki which by the way is huge freaking shoes to fill and so instead of rating his films from worst to best I thought i'd rate them from great to Masterful because honestly all of his films are great so here we go.

Journey to Agartha aka Children Who Chase Lost Voices

I know that alot of people know this film as Children Who Chase Lost Voices but over here in the UK it was released as Journey to Agartha so that's what i'm calling it honestly the only real issue I had with this film is the fact that goes on for far far far to long but apart from that it's a great film to watch and one that I happily own on DVD.

The Garden Of Words

Now i'll admit that I was going to review this film before it turned into this post but while this film is indeed great there are a few issues I have with it 1) the story never gets resolved yeah the film just ends with no real conclusion and 2) nothing really interesting happens at all this might be way this film is only forty five minuets but nothing really interesting happens at all but still I would take all of that over having a film that feel boring.

Your Name

I bet alot of you right now are wondering why this film isn't at the top well that's because I think there's a film better then this one and that's not a knock about this film infact it's as close to perfect as a film can get but since I watched the film months after everyone else the hype for this film was so huge that no matter how good the film was it was always going to fail in my head because the fans made it out to be the next best thing in the history of the world.

5 Centimeters per Second

Yes this is the film that I honestly think is better then Your Name it's Shinakis second film and it relly is so good if your a shinkai fan then I highly recommend you check out this film because alot of the themes that are present in Your Name were in this film it has a great story that we can all relate to , fantastic animation and the dub is actually freaking great and like Journey To Agartha and Your Name I also own this film on DVD and I try to watch it at least once or twice a year.

Guardians Of The Galaxy: Cosmic Avengers Volume 1 Review

Guardians fans the team has found great success on the big screen and I guess you could say the small screen as well altho that depends on who you ask but before they were household names they were a little known comic book team of heroes and in 2013 the team along with a whole host of characters where apart of the Marvel Now which was a relaunch of several comic books and here is my review of the first volume from the 2013 Guardians Cosmic Avengers.

The plot of the book is Earth is now officially of limits to all alien races and it's up to the Guardians and Iron Man to find out what's going on and to put a stop to it. Honestly the plot is well actually is hard for me to say if it's good or bad since I cannot make up my mind either way since it's a typical Guardians plot line but then there are things that are in there which just don't add up but i'll go into those later on since I have alot of thoughts on those.

Making up the team for this book is Star Lord , Drax , Gamora , Rocket and Groot and for some really odd reason they are joined by Iron Man and not the Riri Williams version either it's Tony Stark and it's just weird seeing him with the Guardians i'm not opposed to it since it does lead to some good banter with Rocket but when you think of Guardians Of The Galaxy you don't think of Iron Man so it seems like an odd thing to make him apart of the team.

Speaking of Iron Man they give perhaps the laziest reason as to why he's in space they just say that he's on vacation from Earth and that's it no one questions it and i'm sat here thinking "Tony your an Avenger if anything you need to be on Earth incase it's under attack" and what happens right when Tony leaves earth it gets attacked it only makes me wish that they had come up with a better excuse to have Tony join the team like maybe for example he wants to see what's out there and thus he joins up with the Guardians because they travel all over the galaxy.

The art for this story was done by Steve McNiven who's worked on the original Civil War book as well as many others and honestly I chose the above image because for me it's the best example of his art and the art in this book is pretty good i'm no expert artist by any means but I felt that the artwork in this book was good that at times I wouldn't need to read the speech bubbles in order to understand the story I could just see the pictures and understand what's going on.

For those that don't know the Cosmic Avengers only covers the first three issues of the 2013 Guardians run but the collection also added Tomorrows Avengers number 1 which for me was a strange thing to do why not just leave it with Cosmic Avengers don't try to confuse me by adding in a different issue from a different series it doesn't even connect to Cosmic Avengers in anyway what so ever.

Now lets get onto those issues that I mention before for some unknown reason they made Peter come off as a bit of a douche bag in this story and it serves no purpose at all and it makes him seem very unlikable as a character there was just no reason at all to make him come across as this unlikable yes he saw his mother get killed and he wasn't aware that his dad was a king but that's still no excuse to have him acting in this way what so ever.

The other major issue I have is more story based when the Guardians plus Tony are captured two of the guards mention that Gamora is the daughter of Thanos so instead of letting at least her go to keep daddy sweet they keep her locked up because yeah that's what i'd do if I found out one of the mad titans daughters was going to jail they could have had pretend to be knocked out and then knock the guards out and let her friends out at least that would have been in character.

I will say that the action is honestly really well done and for me that's nothing new since the Guardians films have great action in them but for some reason I never knew that the comics did so for me it was great to see that it wasn't just the films that had good action and unlike the films the action in this story helps advance the story and that's something that I see so rarely be it in film or in comic book.

I picked up both this book and Deadpool Vs Thanos for £5 each and for me given that most comic book collections go for at least double that price i'd say is a freaking steal and I actually had a choice to either review this r Deadpool Vs Thanos and I think I might have made the wrong choice for all the reasons i've listed above but I chose this because I was honestly more familiar with Guardians then I was with Deadpool.

Overall story wise the book is pretty interesting but since it's the start of the new run of books you know that the team will make it out ok so there's no stakes but if you like the comic book feel of the first film then I see no harm in picking up this book for me tho it scores a 6 out of 10.

Thunderbirds Review

Animation fans I have reviewed so many American animated shows both old and new that i've pretty much got it down to a fine art well now to mix things up i'm reviewing a show from my home country and a show that was not only apart of my childhood but also would have neen around thirty years old by the time I watched it and that's Thunderbirds.

The basic premise of the show is in the 21st century the Tracy family operate a unique private mechanized emergency response service. Yeah as you can now doubt tell but the plot summery this show is episodic and there's no overarching story but tho I think for this show it would have worked either way so i'm not really going to knock the show for not having a story arc but I am going to knock the show for having pretty bad pacing but i'll get more into that later on.

Now shockingly even tho this is a British made show all of the actors barring two people are all American and there's an Australien so the Americans are Peter Dyneley as Jeff Tracy , Shane Rimmer as Scott Tracy , both David Holliday (series 1) and Jeremy Wilkin (series 2) as Virgil Tracy and Matt Zimmerman as Alan Tracy. The Australien actor is Ray Barrett as John Tracy and The Hood with the British actors being David Graham as Gordon Trach , Parker , Brains and Kyrano , Christine Finn as Tin-Tin Kyrano and Grandma Tracy and finally we have series co-creator Sylvia Anderson as Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward.

The acting in the show is pretty decent at least for the time it was being made I will say that i'm glad they didn't have the cast put on a British accent they actually made this show so it could be sold to American networks but that said I do wish that they had but a little bit more effort into the voices but that's only a very minor nitpick.

Now then most of my animated reviews be they for a movie or a series one of the few things that I can always mention is who animated them but with this show there isn't a company who did the animation and that's because this show was made using puppets in a technique called Supermarionation no I have no clue what that means but from what I can gather basically it means that the lips move in sync with the audio there's alot more to it then that but I don't understand it all myself so i'm not going to bore you by going through it step by step.

The puppets in the show honestly do hold up really well I was worried going into this that the puppets wouldn't be as good as I remember them being in fact they hold up rather well my only issue with the puppets is the same thing that any fan of this show has and that's the fact you can see the strings pretty much all of the time they are on screen but tho it#s not distracting at least for me it isn't.

I couldn't do a review of this show and not mention the film that was inspired by it Team America: World Police because yeah this show and how they used puppets instead of live actors inspired South Park creators Matt Stone And Trey Parker to create there second feature length film except where Thunderbirds is a show made for kids Team America is made for adults so them being puppets and being able to see the string is part of the joke.

For those that don't know or are an American this show first aired on Associated Television in the UK which is a franchise owned by UK channel ITV it ran from September 30th 1965 to Christmas Day 1966 sadly I cannot find where or when it aired in America but the show ran for two series with a grand total of thirty two episodes with series one having a whopping twenty six episodes and series two having six episodes.

Something else that might surprise you is the fact that each episode clocks in at around fifty minuets this was due to Lew Grade who was the shows financial backer and was one of the founders at the shows distributor ITC Entertainment after he was done praising the first episode for it's plot and special effects he said this "That's not a television series, that's a feature film!" and then proceeded to increase the shows budget from £25,000 per episode to £38,000. 

It really is refreshing to here news of someone who believed in a show so much that he not only asked the co-creator Gerry Anderson to double the length of each episode but also increased the show's budget which I assume didn't make him popular in the office that day but it goes to show that if someone does have faith in something then they should go that extra mile to make it a huge success and Lew did that.

Even tho i've just this second praised Lew for ordering an increase in length I have to say that there are times when the episodes become boring and I think that's due to the pacing being rather slow especially around say the twenty / twenty five minuet mark and i'm honestly not sure why that is but I don't think that every episode needed to be fifty minuets some of them could have been around forty five minuets.

I have something to admit I was a bit of a Thunderbirds fan growing up in the 90's you see that above picture yeah I had that as a kid and I played with it alot I also had a few of the other toys that they had as well and I also had a few of the VHS tapes that they released and to add to all of that when the episodes where re-aired I would watch them even tho chances are i've seen that episode on one of the VHS tapes but bottom line is i'm a fan and have been since I was a kid.

If your a James Bond fan out there then you might like to know that the special effects for this show were done by the late and great Derek Meddings and I have to say that the special effects in this series are truly fantastic and you can tell that alot of time and passion went into them and it truly is a shame that we don't have somebody like Derek in the industry now.

Just to give you guys an example of how popular this franchise was at the time there was not one but two feature films made released in 1966 and 1968 respectively (both of which I plan on reviewing) no kids show at the time got a feature film but with Thunderbirds it was so popular that it earned two films it also earned a lesser remake which even Gerry Anderson hates so if you hate that film then your not alone.

Before we got the actually decent CGI remake Thunderbirds Are Go there was talk for many years I believe the earliest it dates back to is 2005 but believe it or not it's not the first the first one was a sequel anime called Thunderbirds 2086 well I say it's a sequel since it was produced by ITC but it doesn't feature the involvement of any of the original creators.

Overall if your a fan of what i'm calling puppet animation then I recommend you watch this show but be ready to see all of the strings and to be bored in most of the episodes but it's worth it for the fantastic special effects and the great music by Barry Grey so this original series scores an 8.5 out of 10 from me.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2 Review

Batman fans yesterday I brought you a review of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 so it only seems right that today I finish this story of by bringing you a review of the second part so here is my review of Batman: the Dark Knight Returns Part 2 enjoy it batfans.

So then what is the plot of this movie I pretend your saying right now well Batman has finally returned but so has an old foe and he's out for vengeance the only way he knows how. I know i'm being really vague in the plot summery but that's because honestly there really isn't that much of a story outside of what I described but I will give the film this it does have pretty solid pacing.

Returning from the first film is Robocop as Batman , One of the hot chicks from Modern Family as Robin , Michael Emerson as The Joker , Maria Canals-Barrera as Commissioner Ellen Yindel , David Selby as Jim Gordon and Michael Jackson as Alfred Pennyworth. Honestly it's hard for me to say which of the returning cast did the best job since all of them are really good in this movie altho it's pretty strange hearing Peter Weller playing Batman and fact after when I went to watch this movie all I could hear in my head was Robocop.

They are joined by Mark Valley as Superman , Robin Atkin Downes as Oliver Queen , Tress MacNeille as Selina Kyle , Jim Meskimen as President Ronald Reagan and Conan O'Brien as David Endochrine. What's Interesting about this film is voice acting legend Tara Strong provides additional voices for this film so if you hear a character that sounds like Bubbles now you know why.

Out of the new cast I'd have to say that my favorite was Mark Valley as the big blue boy scout just because he portrays a more wiser version of the character and I think that's a more interesting take on a classic character.

Thankfully I didn't need that many Shovels this time because I already knew that returning to do the animation for this film was Moi Animation and I have to say that the animation in this film was slightly better then the previous I sat slightly because you still get the odd looking drawing but they make up for it with the well animated fight scenes which for me is when you should always get the best animation.

Honestly there's not that much that really bugged me about this film which is strange for me just because there's usually a few things that really annoy me in films but i've pretty much mentioned the only real issues I personally had with the film so if your expecting me to crack jokes about how bad the film this I really can't because it's a good film.

I will say that if you want to see a better version of Batman V Superman then this is fr sure the film because this film handles there conflict so much better if I remember right in the theatrical cut of BVS there conflict is pretty much summed up in one sentence but here we are given multiple scenes so when they finally do come to blows we fully understand why they are fighting instead of "let's fight because it would be funny".

Now I've received comments pretty much saying why I should have read the original graphic novel first the reason why I chose to take a look at the movie versions first is because A) despite The dark Knight Returns only being three issues since they can have as many pages as they need per issue it means you could have alot of filler and B) I'm honestly lazy in the time it would have taken my to get through all the issues I could have watched both parts of this movie.

If Batman doing the cover pose in the movie was deemed as fan service then this movie has a scene which is fan service if your an American and I think the above image pretty much says it all it's such a pro America image that it really doesn't fit in with the rest of the film if the scene was Superman dressed in a suit talking to Bruce and Eagle happened to fly over heard it would work but just look at it how is this image not pro America.

I touched on this briefly in this review but the fight scenes in this film are really freaking good and unlike freaking BVS there was no "Martha" moment either in those scenes and this is where the film being a UK rated 15 really worked because in the final fight with Superman you feel every single punch and you get to see both heroes bleed.

Overall this is was a pretty good conclusion to the first film but if I were to choose i'd say that the first film was better and as you can tell by the above image i'm really looking forward to the Hush animated movie that's coming out I give this film a 7.5 out of 10.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 Review

Batman fans the dark knight has featured in so many animated films ranging from great to bizarre but he's never been in a two part film before will in 2012 and 2013 that all changed with the release of the two part film adaptation of the Frank Miller classic The Dark Knight Returns so here is my review of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1.

The plot for part 1 is Batman has not been seen for ten years a new breed of criminal ravages Gotham City forcing a now 55-year-old Bruce Wayne back into the cape and cowl but does he still have what it takes to fight crime in a new era?. yeah this part of the film is mainly about Bruce coming out of retirement and I have to say that seeing an old Bruce suiting up as Batman perfectly ties in with his character and the story is fairly solid even if it is basically the first half or so of the graphic novel.

Starring as Batman in this movie is Robocop i'm not even making that up actor Peter Weller who plays Batman in this film also played Robocop in the original film and he is joined by Ariel Winter as Carrie Kelley , David Selby as Jim Gordon , Wade Williams as Harvey Dent , Michael Emerson as The Joker , Maria Canals-Barrera as Commissioner Ellen Yindel , Michael Jackson (no not that one) as Alfred Pennyworth , Bruce Timm as Thomas Wayne and Gary Anthony Williams as Mutant Leader.

I was honestly shocked at how good Peter Weller was as Batman / Bruce Wayne I really can't say how he portrays him but it's one that suits the tone of this film very well and I liked Ariel Winter in this film and I think her version of Carrie Kelley is solid since her character does provide some of the much needed comic relief and the rest of the cast are pretty solid and I will say now that some of the characters who don't have a big role in this film have a bigger role in part 2.

After many moons of digging and more digging I finally ran out of shovels and then I went online and found out that the animation for this film was done by Moi Animation aka the studio that animated Avatar and I have to say that the animation in this film was honestly really good it's not by any means perfect you do get the odd drawing here and there which is to be expected in any movie really but here since the story is so good and so strong it doesn't really take anything away from the film.

I mentioned before how Bruce being old and yet suiting up was in his character and it's so true Bruce Wayne not for one minuet would allow himself any bit of happiness no matter what form it took in fact the only reason why he stopped being Batman for so long was the fact that he's drinking alot. 

If you think back to the very first animated Batman movie we have a series of flashbacks where we see Bruce be happy and in one of those flashbacks he's begging his parents to not keep him to his promise and let him be happy in my mind the same thing is kind of happening here Bruce is happy not being Batman and in this case he's begging the city to let him stay happy but when the city says no you made a promise so keep it that's when he finally suits back up.

I havn't read the original source material so I cannot say if this is a faithful adaptation or not but I can say that as a film the story is really good and as you can no doubt tell by the above picture that iconic cover does appear in the movie and to me that was the only scene in the movie that felt like total fan service it's not a bad scene but if you look at in context of the film you can just tell that it was there for fan service.

I have to mention the awesome Batman reveal to me that was one of the best scenes in the whole movie that whole scene was just so well done (just to make things clear i'm talking about the scene where Batman first comes back not the opening of the movie) everything in that scene made it feel like Batman coming was a big deal which is what it should have done since it is a big deal it was well edited , animated , written and acted I also like the fact that it was a slow build for the vast majority of that scene we barely see Batman in full we either just see certain body parts or it's his shadow.

Rather shockingly there isn't that much action in this movie but what action there is in the movie is really well done this is a UK rated 15 film so you get to see alot of blood in this movie and alot of it comes from Batman himself and that's something you very rarely see in animated media and it always happens after an intense action see which to me says that the action scenes in this movie mean something there not just there to add a bit of excitement they are here to help advance the story.

Overall this is a really solid first part and to me it's one of the few films that does the whole two part film right but tho it does have it's fair share of problems and ironically there the same problems that all first part films have but it's still an enjoyable film in it's own right and it scores an 8 out of 10 from me.

Some Comic Books That I Would Love To See Get An Animated Series

Comic Book fans it's very common for someone to turn a comic book character into an animated series just look at Disney as prime examples but for every one that does get made there are a dozen or so that don't even get looked at and so i'm going to list of the comic books that I want to see turned into an animated series.

Grimm Fairy Tales

This series presents a take on classic fairy tales that is more inline with there original source material so this could make for a really exiting adult animated show heck one of the characters was so popular that she got her own Syfy show Van Helsing but just imagine if the whole Grimm universe was adapted for this series we could see Cinderella interact with Snow White and Alice and we could see Robyn Hood (that's how they spell it in this series) interact with Dorothy Gale you could do pretty much anything and it would work.

Suicide Squad

Yes I know that Harley Quinn is getting her own animated series but this one could also work as a series again the only way this could work for me is if you make it an adult series since the team is mostly made up of villains that would make the most sense and heck the recent animated movie Suicide Squad: Hell To Pay proved that the team can look good in animated form and if you wanted to tie this into the new Harley Quinn series then make this one a spin off.

Any 2000 AD Character

2000 Ad has such a great selection of characters some have already been seen in movies but none have been turned into an animated series and to me that's just wrong Judge Dredd has proven himself popular twice at the box office and you wouldn't have to stick to one genre of show Dredd could be a cop show , Slaine could a violent fantasy epic and Survival Geeks could be a Sci-Fi comedy there are so many genres you could do if these characters were adapted into an animated series.

Hellboy

Like Suicide Squad Hellboy has not only appeared in live action but also in animation and also like Suicide Squad he has never gotten an animated series despite how popular he became after the 2004 movie perhaps the reason why he's not been given his own animated series is the fact that the series does focus alot on supernatural elements but the way I see it is if Supernatural can get an anime then why can't Hellboy get his own animated series.

Vampirella

She's pretty much a vampire freaking superhero how in the hell is this not been turned into an animated series already the series pretty much writes itself and since this is a horror character you can really go all out in terms of the story and the things you can get away with all you need to do is get somebody like Adult Swim to air the show and the shows golden.

Deadpool

This was honestly one of the few things I was really excited for when it first announced and then they announced that the glover brothers were going to be behind it and I got even more excited and then they cancelled it which is a shame because Deadpool IS a cartoon character so all they had to do was put that character on the small screen that was it and yes I still believe that one day this character will get his own animated series.

Red Sonja

This character kinda got an animated film but it's really more of a motion comic but the character has never been given an animated series which is a shame because if you make the show in the vain of Xena mixed in with Game Of Thrones it could really work I really cannot be the only one who sees the potential in an animated Red Sonja series even today she's still popular this is a series that's just begging to happen.

Spicy City Review

In the world of animated shows aimed at adults there are alot of shows that people talk about shows like Robot Chicken , Superjail and Archer to name but a few but the one show that has been forgotten due to the passage of time is ironically the show that started it all for animated shows aimed at adults so here is my review of Spicy City.

The format that this show took was that of an anthology series so each episode had it's story and cast of characters with the only connecting factor being that of the character Raven who is pretty much the host of the show. Making the show an anthology does make it stand out from other adult animated shows but at the same time it would have been nice if there was more then one connecting factor like maybe you could have characters crossover into each others stories or maybe have a recurring location.

Now as I mentioned each episode had a different cast of characters and so the cast list is huge but the only actor to appear in all six episodes was Michelle Phillips as Raven but also in the show was the likes of A Nightmare On Elm Street 4 star Tuesday Knight and E.G. Daily, 

The acting for me was very hit and miss for every performance that I thought was good there would be one that wasn't Michelle did a great job as the "host" Raven but Tuesday Knight wasn't that good for me she really should have stuck to singing because her voice acting at least in this show wasn't that good and with E.G> you know your in a for a good performance so I wasn't really shocked when she gave a good performance in this.

The animation came from two different companies Koko Entertainment and Dong Yang Animation and honestly the animation was really good but I have to wonder why were two different animation studios contacted about doing this show when one would have been cheaper and easier to find. I will say that in the final episode I did notice that some of the background characters looked like they could have came from Batman: The Animated Series it's not that much of a bad thing but it was distracting to see.

It's common assumption that South Park is the first animated show aimed at adults and while it was the first one to go mainstream that show came out one month after this one which means that by default Spicy City is the first adult orientated cartoon show but tho Spicy City was only made due to the popularity of Jesus vs. Santa the second short that helped bring South Park to life.

For awhile I was racking my head trying to think of why this isn't talked about in the cartoon fanbase and one of the reasons I came up with wasn't due to the fact that it came out in late nineties but rather it's lack of seasons for you see Spicy City only lasted six episodes but tho a second season was commissioned and then cancelled by HBO because they wanted to replace all the writers and the creator of the show Ralph Bakshi refused to bow down to that demand and thus Spicy City bit the dust.

As I just mentioned the creator of the show was Ralph Bakshi one of  the greatest animation directors of our time but the legends in animation doesn't really end there because Eric Radomski the creator of Batman: The Animated Series did some work on the show altho for some reason even tho he's listed in the shows opening credits he's not listed on IMDB but tho also working on the show was a man called John Kafka and if you don't know his name look him on IMDB and you'll soon see that he's worked on alot of great shows.

Ralph did alot of work on this show because not only was he the creator and executive producer but he also directed two episodes , came up with character designs for two episodes and was the series voice director I want to know if he ever slept during this show because that's alot of work to do on one show so I have to give the guy alot of respect and it might have helped that his son Preston was a writer on the show.

Since i've called this show an animated show aimed at adults many times in this review it should come as no surprise to you that there's alot of swearing , violence , nudity among many other things (or as Ralph Bakshi calls the first draft of a new screenplay) so don't watch this show with your parents trust me it will embarrass both you and them but tho here those adult things that i've mentioned also help to tell whatever story they happen to be telling in that episode so it's not there just for the hell of it it's there to serve a purpose.

Overall this was a show that I was already watching prior to this review and yet when re-watching it I was still taken a back by how good it was and it's a show that shouldn't be forgotten but it's also a show with problems so it gets a 7.5 out of 10 from me.