Marvel Rising: Initiation Review

Marvel fans it's not often that the company releases a new animated feature n fact the last feature film that was animated was an anime called Iron Man and Captain America: Heroes United and that was released in 2014 well in order to get people hyped up for there next animated feature Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors Disney and Marvel have released six shorts called Marvel Rising: Initiation so lets get this review started.

The plot of the shorts is Gwen Stacy is now going by the name Ghost Spider and is determined to hunt down the person who framed her for murder. Yeah for a Disney show it has a pretty dark plot line but tho the plot is used more as a set up for the movie so don't go into it expecting there to be any real conclusion but I will say that each of the episodes are really well paced.

Starring in the short series is Dove Cameron as Gwen Stacy , Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson , Kathreen Khavari , Milana Vayntrub and Kamil McFadden. When going through the list of actors I was honestly shocked at how many of them have played these characters and yes I am counting Milana in there since she is also playing Squirrel Girl in the New Warriors TV show but even so it's great that both Marvel and Disney got alot of actors back for these shorts as well as the film.

Speaking of the actors I thought the performances were really good and I knew right when I saw the cast list that alot of these actors have young fans who will defend there work no matter what and in this case if any of those fans were to say that certain actors in this series were good i'd happily agree because they'd be right.

I can't find a company credited with the animation heck there's not even any end credits for this series which is a shame because the animation for this show is easily better then some of the recent Marvel animated shows (i'm looking at you Spider-Man) all of the characters have really unique looks to them so your not going to confuse characters and there's alot of really fluid movements and that for me really helps sell the action scenes.

Now when I found out that each episode was going to be around five minuets in length the first thing I did was check the comments section of any streaming site which had the series up because I knew that alot of people didn't like that format when it was done with Vixen , The Ray and Constantine and to my shock there was very little to no comments about the short run time so I have to ask why do people think that it's ok to hate on DC for doing it but then say nothing when Disney / marvel do the exact same thing guys if your going to hate one company for doing it then go and complain when it's rival does the same thing.

One of the few complaints that i've seen is that the writing for Squirrel Girl is bad and that leaves me wondering if people no that she's not meant to be a serious character yes that's no excuse for any kind of bad writing but you can't go comparing her to characters like Ms. Marvel or any other serious character that's just not fair you have to judge her either on her own or with other less serious characters.

Disney kind of released this series without many people knowing about it I think there was only one teaser released and even then it was a clip from either episode 2 or episode 3 you would have thought that they would have put a little effort into promoting not only this series but also the film and judging by how things are going I don't think the film will get much of a push either.

I want to make it very clear that I have no idea at what time this series aired or if it's still airing but Disney did air all six episodes on August 13th and oddly enough it aired on Disney XD I say that because not only has the company made more of an effort in putting more animated shows on there main channel but the movie itself is due to air on Disney Channel so surely it would have made more sense to air this mini series on Disney channel rather then Disney XD.

I will say that for me at least it was a wise choice in making Gwen the main character of this series since she is the most popular character and I do like the way she's used in this series heck for me she's easily this series best character she gets some of the best lines and is involved in literally all of the action scenes.

While Gwen gets alot of the best lines she doesn't get alot of the funniest lines instead that honor goes to Squirrel Girl and i'd say she has the funniest line in the whole series I won't spoil what the line is but just the line itself pokes fun at tropes seen in alot of anime and it's one that had me laughing out loud.

Since this is an action series we have to talk about the actual action scenes and I thought that for a series that only has six episodes and those episodes only being around 5 minuets in length there's quite a bit of action thrown in each episode and I thought that the action was pretty good would it have been better if the show had a longer running time who knows but for this series the action scenes were really exciting to see.

Overall the shirts I thought were pretty good and I think should please a lot of fans and hopefully keep them happy until after the FOX merger has happened but it's also a series that has flaws like for example it doesn't finish the story it sets up so now I have to wait until sometime in late 2018 for Marvel Rising to come out so I can see how it ends so this series scores an 7.5 out of 10 from me.

Mega Man: Fully Charged Review

Cartoon Network is back with a new show and this is one that alot of people have been looking forward to and i'm betting those people are now very disappointed so here is my review of Mega Man: Fully Charged.

The set up of this show is Aki Light is a normal half human half robot boy who has the ability to transform into the hero Mega Man and protect the citizens of Silicon City.For me the set up does work but to me it feels like the standerd CW arrowverse show except without the charm and very dumbed down plus there's no real story I do however like the pacing in each episode it's nither to fast nor to slow.

Starring in the show are Vincent Tong , Ryan Beil , Caitlyn Bairstow , Cole Howard , Garry Chalk , Michael Adamthwaite , Brian Drummond , Ian Hanlin , Andrew McNee , Kathleen Barr , Samuel Vincent and Travis Turner. In terms of acting the show does fair a little better since alot of the actors in the show are pretty good in this show but my issue is they aren't given anything to really work with so the actors can only do so much.

The episodes are eleven minuets in length and for me that's not enough time for an action show for me an action show should be twenty two minuets and since this show has eleven minuet episodes it means alot of stuff either gets rushed or just flat out isn't there. I've watched the first ten episodes of this show and i can safely say that the characters just aren't that interesting nor memorable and I believe that if the show had longer episodes they could easily fix those problems.

I honestly wish I could tell you who did the animation for this show but I can't find any listed company which is good because I have alot of bad things to say about the animation of this show for some reason they chose to animate this show using CGI which just looks awful and can at times be nightmare fuel but then there are times where the animation looks cell shaded and it just comes of looking pretty bad.

As I briefly mentioned before there are ten episodes of this show out on demand right now so that means you don't have to watch this rubbish on CN you can just watch it online and not give them any of your money that's how bad I think this show is and yes you could argue that this show is good for little kids but the Mega Man franchise has a lot of adult fans so any new product from that show is going to get alot of attention from them so while a kid might like me as an adult I don't like it.

To say that there isn't much humor to be found in this series would be an understatement during all ten episodes I didn't laugh once I honestly think that's some sort of record again there might be little kids out there who find this show funny but to me and i'm gonna guess many others it's just not funny at all none of the jokes worked.

One of the things which got really annoying for me very early on was the fact that for no reason what so ever at random points in episodes the show would morph into the style of the old Mega Man games I wouldn't have minded it so much if there was a reason for it happening but there is none at all it just happens and it's very irritating and pointless.

The action scene i'll admit can be fun heck i'd go as far to say that there the most fun part of the episodes you get to see Mega Man use alot of his gadgets and you get to see some pretty cool looking villains however there is one slight issue that I have and that's that they give Mega Man a power up every single episode power ups should be saved for important episodes we don't need to see a hero get one everytime they enter a fight it makes it seem boring and pointless.

Overall this is the second worst show that Man Of Action have been involved with (the first being THAT Ben 10 reboot) and I can clearly see why this has a 3.2 on IMDB it has a lot of faults so it gets a 3 out of 10 from me.

Deadpool vs Thanos Review

Comic book fans for awhile now both Deadpool and Thanos have been getting pretty popular both thanks to successful movies with deadpool starring in the hugely popular Deadpool films and Thanos from both the Guardians films and Infinity War and so in 2015 the heads at Marvel decided to put them together in a four issue series so here is my review of Deadpool Vs Thanos.

The plot of this series is people suddenly stop dieing and it's up to Deadpool and his new BFF Thanos to find there ex Death and restore balance to the world. Yes you read that right folks the merc with a mouth has to team up with the mad titan and honestly there scenes together are where this series shines best and the story pretty much plays out like a buddy cop movie and that to me makes it more fun.

Now then of course there are more characters in this book besides from Deadpool , Thanos and Death so we also have Black Talon and , Ajax aka Francis and mephisto and all of those in there own way contribute to the plot of the story in there own unique way and that's good because otherwise they'd come of as nothing more then cameos and just looking at how Black Talon is dressed i'm sat here wondering why he hasn't been used in and then mocked in a Deadpool movie his costume is rif for mocking.

The art for the book was done by Elmo Bondoc who has only worked on this book and I think I know why because the art in this book isn't that good i'm not in any position to pass judgement but I feel like he could have done one or two drawings of some scenes better just to help improve the quality of the book it self.

The writer is Tim Seeley who's worked on two many comic books to mention and I will say that the above image is perhaps the best Deadpool scene that i've seen in a long time it's Deadpool at his most idiotic and the scene it self is just so well written while your laughing at Deadpools antics you also no that something is really messed up.

As you can no doubt tell this book is pretty mature I don't really think that needs saying since it's a Deadpool book but since I saw young kids being taken to see his movie I thought i'd put that out there but yeah this book does contain alot of blood which you can see in the above picture and there are one or two swear words thrown in there so just a heads up incase there's nothing in here for little kids this is a series meant for teens or older.

As I mentioned before this series was four issues long and it ran from November to December 2015 and what helps it standout a little bit is it's actually set before Marvel Now! I know this because Deadpool himself comes right out and says it and I think it's cool that Marvel released something set in an old continuity.

I think I brought this up in my Cosmic Avengers review but I got this book for a really low price of just £5 and i'm choosing to review it now because i'm thinking of doing a spoiler filled review of the Deadpool extended cut so this post has come at just the right time for Deadpool fans.

For me the best part of this series is seeing Deadpool and Thanos together because they seem like characters that shouldn't work when you put them together and yet in this series that pairing does indeed work but tho this also leads to my major issues with the book it's called Deadpool Vs Thanos and yet for 99% of the time there not fighting each other that would be fine if the series was say six issues long and then you just have them team up for the first three and have them fighting for the back three but here in a four issue series it doesn't work I payed to see Deadpool beat up Thanos not to see them team up.

There are alot of funny jokes in this series and rather surprisingly for a Deadpool series there's very few fourth wall breaks I guess that's because Ryan Reynolds knocked them all done with that epic sixteen wall break in the first movie but tho all of the jokes in this book had me laughing and they were also in Deadpools character like he straight up kills a guy before he reveals Doctor Doom is in the series and he then makes a crack about new comic book day which I found to be funny as hell.

Overall this was a very good book to read it's one that I had alot of fun reading but it also has some issues which i've covered in this review but even still it scores a 7.5 out of 10 from me.

Tiny Toon Adventures Review

Hello there toonsters the Looney Tunes have always been and will always be popular characters but in the early nineties something different was done with the characters and before you all say it no the characters weren't turned into little kids instead a new series was created that showcased the next generation of Looney Tunes so here is my review of Tiny Toon Adventures.

The set up of the show is rather hard to explain since there's no plot or premise at all it's the next generation of Looney Tunes living life , having adventures and attending ACME Looniversity where all the teachers are the old cast of characters and each of the episodes would almost always have a different set up but I will say that the pacing of each episode is pretty good at times but there are some episodes that feel slower.

Starring in this show was Charlie Adler , Joe Alaskey , Danny Cooksey , John Kassir , Maurice LaMarche , Tress MacNeille , Gail Matthius , Don Messick , Candi Milo , Rob Paulsen , Kath Soucie , Cree Summer and Frank Welker. Yeah I know that there are alot more actors in this show but that's the thing there's a lot more actors heck i've not even scratched the surface of the people that are in this show.

All of the actors in this show give really great performances and as you can see by who's starring in the show that's not really a surprise alot of the cast members are legends and while this show might not be the best example of their work it's still a group of really fine actors and actresses giving it there all and they are all really good and most importantly really funny in this show.

What helps make this show stand out is the fact that there were several different animation studios involved with each episode while Warner Bros did infact produce the show they didn't do the animation instead companies such as TMS Entertainment , Wang Film Productions, AKOM and StarToons but there was one studio that got let go after the first season due to there inconsistent levels of quality and that's Kennedy Cartoons. 

The overall quality of the animation isn't that bad it still has the same amount of passion init that the classic Looney tunes shorts would have had except now they actually have a budget but tho with that being said there are some episodes where the animation isn't that great but they are few and far between at least in my eyes.

Honestly guys the broadcast history of this show is more interesting than the animation history because the pilot episode and the first season ran on CBS but then from 1992 onward the show aired on Fox kids I guess CBS had figured that they had seen enough of the characters since the first season had a whopping sixty five episodes but it seems strange that CBS wouldn't continue airing a hit show.

The show lasted alot longer then what people think because even tho the show only had three seasons like I said that first season was sixty five episodes and lasted nearly a full year but out side of that the show also had a direct to VHS movie called Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation and two TV specials called Tiny Toon Spring Break and Tiny Toons' Night Ghoulery so they made alot of Tiny Toons content and I can guarantee your never going to see the same episode twice because in total there are close to one hundred episodes.

When I went into this show I wasn't expecting there to be alot of adult jokes in it but low and behold in the second ever episode there's a Watchmen reference it's a quick little reference but near the start of episode two on the chalk board behind plucky there's some text that reads "who watches the ducksters"or something like that and it's a nod to Watchmen and i',m sat here wondering if any kid ever got what that was a reference to.

Honestly alot of the jokes in this show are funny there's a really funny anti-smoking episode which was in the first season and so it aired before the infamous "One Beer" episode and it's full of small little jokes all of the jokes in this show are so funny and so well written that you can see why alot of the same staff went on to work on Animaniacs they are that talented and not afraid to poke fun at themselves.

I cannot talk about this show and not mention the theme song to me the Tiny Toons theme song is so good that t should be remembered for years to come in that one minuet intro we get a brief introduction as to who all the characters are and what there personality trait is and it helps that the theme song was done by Bruce Broughton who's worked on alot of great shows even recently he's done the opening to The Orville.

Overall i'm so glad that I went back a re-watched this show (yes I watched it growing up) it is a very funny show and one that I recommend any Looney Tunes fan watch but the show does have some problems tho so it gets an 8.5 out of 10 from me.

Hercules and Xena The Animated Movie: The Battle for Mount Olympus Review

Oh boy here is a movie I didn't think i'd be reviewing anytime soon but here we are for you see in the nineties there were two live action shows called Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and it's spin off Xena: Warrior Princess both shows were popular that they decided to make a movie spin off and boy oh boy do I have some thoughts so let's get going shall we.

I would like to tell you what the plot of the movie is but the movie barely has one but the basic premise of the film is Hercules and Xena have to team up with the gods of Mount Olympus to stop the place from being taken over. Yeah this movie doesn't have that much plot in it it just has the basic setup and while the set up does work for an episode of either show it doesn't work for a movie for a movie you need a beginning , a middle and an end here we have a beginning but that's it there's no middle or no end.

Now since this is based of not one but two shows we have alot of returning actors and they are Kevin Sorbo as Hercules , Lucy Lawless as Xena , Michael Hurst as Iolaus , Renee O'Connor as Gabrielle , Alexandra Tydings as Aphrodite and Kevin Smith (not that one) as Ares. The returning cast are decent or as decent as they can be since alot of them aren't that good but out of the returning actors honestly i'd say ether Lucy or Renee are the best ones because they are actually trying.

In terms of new characters we have Josephine Davison as Alcmene and Artemis , Joy Watson as Hera , Peter Rowley as Zeus , David Mackie as Porphyrion , Alison Wall as Tethys and Mnemosyne and Ted Raimi as Crius. The new cast do not fair much better because I cannot recall a single memorable performer i'm not even kidding there all just bland performances.

Now when I usually research a films production history i'll usually find who animated it and in most cases I can usually find out who did it but in this case i'm glad that I couldn't find out who did the animation because the animation is so bad it looks like something that got made cheaply in the 60's instead of something that was cheaply made in the 90's.

If that's not bad enough the characters don't even look like their live action counterparts how do you mess that up you have literally hours worth of footage to sit through so you should be able to make Xena look like Lucy Lawless this is film making 101 and for some reason they made Hercules way to muscular when Kevin Sorbo was never that huge in real life.

Just to give you guys some background information on both shows Hercules: The Legendary Journeys started in 1995 and ran until 1999 spanning six seasons I cannot find what network it ran on but it was huge and one of the shows popular characters was Xena who would be given her own spin off series starting in 1995 and ran until 2001 again spanning six seasons and Xena was huge step forward for female led action shows and has thus earned her spot in pop culture history.

I'm not gonna lie and say that both shows were perfect in every way because they weren't but they were at least enjoyably bad you can watch both shows and laugh at how bad they were because they embraced it here tho you can't do that because the film isn't so bad it's good it's just flat out bad and for something that's based on something that's all ready bad that's not a good thing at all.

This movie isn't even ninety minuets it's more like seventy five minuets long and the first three minuets of the film is a dreadful song sequence which adds nothing to the story and it's only purpose is to tell us Hercules's backstory something that fans of the show would already know about so it makes that whole opening pointless.

Like both live action shows the best parts of this movie are the fight scenes since the fight scenes are now animated the team could really go overboard with what the characters could do and to me that adds to the cheese factor of this film and it makes it slightly bearable to watch but given how bad this film is that's not really saying that much.

Overall this film is pretty god damn cheesy but it's not a good movie heck i'd struggle to say it's ok movie there's no wonder this film was released straight to VHS it really is a bad film and it scores a 3.5 out of 10 from me.

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.