Showing posts with label best anime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label best anime. Show all posts
Fullmetal Alchemist was the first anime that I ever experienced. I had seen American cartoons before but this was something completely new to me, despite its setting being European in nature. Amestris looked and sounded beautiful and the tale of two brothers trying to regain what they once had instantly gripped me. In 2009 there was an objectively better series called FMA Brotherhood based entirely on the original manga, but the original series will always have a special place in my heart.

Two boys try to bring their mother back from the dead and in doing so the older brother loses and arm and a leg and the younger brother loses his entire body; his soul bonded to a hollow suit of armor. They have since left the goal of resurrecting family and only now want to get their old bodies back using the Philosopher's Stone. This setup is what originally grabbed me when I was younger. Before this anime I hadn't experienced a show - a cartoon - to take itself as seriously as this from the get-go. No 'cartoon' before had dealt with death as serious and down to earth as this one. The darkest animated show that I had seen before this was Avatar: The Last Airbender who's themes drastically differ from this. From the first episode, I was on board with wherever Edward and Alphonse Elric would take me.

Fullmetal Alchemist's characters don't stop with the brothers. Winry Rockbell, an all-the-time-worried but strong mechanic acts as a shoulder for the brothers to lean on throughout the entire series. No matter what personal problems they may have, she serves as a constant reminder of not only where they came from but what they are fighting for. And then there's Mais Hughes. Though he is a fuzzy goofball at heart who tends to brag about his daughter, he is really an intricate investigator who will only answer to Colonel Mustang, his best friend. Mustang is quite the character. He is usually cool and collected but brash leader who tends to lead his troops into less-than-ideal places. He does have an eccentric side, however. Anyone who has seen the show remembers the "tiny mini skirts" ordeal. Mustang is one to not take anyone's crap, but still has a less serious side. I could go on for hours with each of the characters getting a paragraph a piece. Even the 'bad guys', the humunculi, have their own unique personalities, though not as expressed as the main protagonists.

'Bratja'. 'Brothers'. This song breaks my heart. No matter how or when I hear it, I cry. This song represents a bond. The bond between Ed and Al that, though clawed at, will never even scratch. This song is the lifeblood of anything Fullmetal Alchemist. The plucking of the strings create an intense melancholy and the russian choir singer starts out cold and distant but is picked up at the chorus for an uplifting feeling. No pun intended, this song is about brotherhood. Every single track in this anime is fueled by pure, raw emotion. 'Taboo' is the short, ominous theme about the sin that the brothers committed trying to bring their mother back and the repercussions of that action. On the flip side, 'Reunion' is just that. A reunion between family or friends. I don't have to even talk about why 'Koukai' is amazing. This soundtrack means so much to so many people for a great reason. The fact of the matter is that it is spectacular. To me, at least, no soundtrack to any movie, game, anime, or T.V. show has topped it or ever will top it.

For the time the visuals were fantastic but obviously don't hold up as well as Brotherhood's. I'm fine with this because the original FMA series does a much better job at one aspect of animation: lighting. Anything from Colonel Mustang's explosions to the dark corridors of Laboratory 5 look great.. This combined with the music makes a very personal experience for the viewer that cannot be forgotten easily.

Fullmetal Alchemist is something special to me and I've been ranting about it for four paragraphs now. This doesn't mean that it doesn't have flaws. I found that its main villain didn't have a whole lot of personality but they were sinister enough and their goals, though scattered, were good enough to keep me invested. Honestly, any other problems that I had with the series would be going into spoiler territory and comparing it to its 2009 re-adaptation which I don't think is fair considering, if I reviewed the 2003 series when it finished, Brotherhood wasn't even an idea in Studio Bones' collective consciousness. However, near the end of the show some of the characters introduced get a little ridiculous and I might even do a video comparing the two in the future. For now I don't think I should critique it any more than that.

Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is utterly spectacular and one of my favorite shows of all time.
Wednesday, June 08, 2016
"When it comes down to it, there are few people who will swing the bat." This quote, among others, sums up FLCL perfectly. To put it simply, it's a story about growing up; actions vs. consequence, true love, etc. This story approaches it from an angle that I have never quite seen before. Using beautiful story and animation techniques it provides multiple viewpoints for a story about one kid's journey.

The story is all over the place in a good way. Characters are introduced ad nauseum, plot threads get cut and reintroduced seemingly randomly, and personalities can flip at a dime. In any other anime these would all be bad things but in FLCL it sums up what it means to be young. You meet new people, forget and remember past actions, and most importantly, you are extremely emotional. The character of Naota is just this. At the start of the show he is young, immature, and inexperienced but when the finale hits, he is a whole new man. Every single character in this show has a great arc of growing up. By episode six every single character has changed and grown. Before the plot of the show, Naota's older brother had a girlfriend named Mamimi. When he graduated, however, he moved to the U.S. in order to pursue his own dreams which leaves Mamimi heartbroken and she uses Naota as a cushion for her sadness. To her, Naota is the closest she can get to Naota's brother. This does cause trouble, though. Naota is twelve and Mamimi is seventeen. Among the funny and awkward character interactions the position they're in is conducive to them understanding each other more by the end. The first episode of FLCL is an utter masterpiece. I don't want to give too much away but a character is introduced in a way that perfectly captures her personality. The show's story isn't without its faults though. The show does have a supernatural element to it that isn't explained very well. The characters do work well around this element and it can lead to some great action scenes and funny moments, but it isn't until the finale that you truly understand what's going on. Is that a bad thing? No but I feel the series would have been even better if it at least hinted at the explanation.

The animation and soundtrack are both mind-blowing. The art style is perfect and the fight scenes have a certain kind of Saguka to them that really got my heart racing. The character designs themselves are even great. The characters are all memorable just by their designs alone which helps you become attached to them even more. The soundtrack fits the show perfectly. Almost every song is created by a Japanese band named "The Pillows". They do a great job at catching the theme of the show and the entire OST will go straight into my music library after writing this.

FLCL is an anime that I will never forget watching. It is clean, simple, but also beautiful and surprisingly mature for a comedy-action series. The plot is confusing but has great re-watchablity.

FLCL is utterly crazy in a good way but can be hard to follow. 

Wednesday, March 23, 2016
This movie really took be by surprise. By the art style and tone of the film you wouldn't think that it would be this good and relatable. My Neighbors the Yamadas is a film of stories. It has different chapters of the Yamada's life split up into small short stories that make the film. This is the movie's greatest strength and weakness as at about half way through I checked the progress bar to see how much of the movie was left. Though I do enjoy all of the little stories, watching them all in one sitting is just a little bit overwhelming. I would have probably taken a break half way through if it weren't for the wonderful cartoon art style that the film is showing. The entire feature feels like it was ripped straight from a comic book and just looks great the whole way through. There were a couple scenes on the Yamada's TV that even look rotoscoped from real broadcasts, though it could just be that the animation team was brilliant. This is also the funniest Studio Ghibli movie I've seen with the comedy not coming from slapstick or action like with some of Ghibli's other films, but rather with just an interesting family being interesting and inherently funny. None of the situations that the characters seem to get themselves into are too far fetched from reality. All of them are relatable. How many times have you gone to school or work just to realize half-way through your trip that you had forgotten a crucial object needed for those activities. Or how many times have you fought with a family member over what you wanted to eat for dinner? That is the comedy that My Neighbors the Yamadas provides and it is always on point. The music in the film can be described in one word: happy. This word can really describe the whole movie. If I had one problem with the movie it's that the youngest sibling, Nonoko, didn't get as much screen time as I would have liked. The very first short story was centered mainly around her but I would have liked more from her because of how much I enjoyed her personality. In fact all the characters have personality and I loved each and every one of them.

My Neighbors the Yamadas was unique.
Monday, February 01, 2016
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