Tag: backstory

Millennium Actress Movie Review

by macksamson, posted in Anime Movies, Miscellaneous

I stated in my Tokyo Godfathers review that it was the “best anime movie I’ve seen since Ghost in the Shell“. As such, it was a no-brainer that would watch another Satoshi Kon flick, Millennium Actress, on Kanopy, from a completely different license holder than GKids. Going into it, I was aware that Tokyo Godfathers was a black sheep in Kon’s career, and that this movie was going to be much darker and stranger than I could possibly expect.

In Millennium Actress, two documentarians, Genya Tachibana and Kyouji Ida, are given the opportunity to interview retired actress Chiyoko Fujiwara. The old bird gladly divulges her life story to them, and those two end up along for quite a ride.

And I mean that literally. The movie seems straightforward at first glance, and that’s because it is. Minor spoilers: it doesn’t take long before the men interviewing her are literally IN Chiyoko’s flashbacks along with her past self.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get more meta, here’s a real hum-dinger. The bulk of Chiyoko’s story isn’t just told through flashbacks, but additionally through assorted scenes in her movies. These are seamlessly integrated into the actual plot, which is quite impressive (also, it’s convenient that all of her movies had similar premises). In these sequences, Tachibana ends up inexplicably planted into each given movie as an extra, further adding to the meta aspect.

Unfortunately, the biggest issue with Millennium Actress is Chiyoko’s story itself. The main conflict of the movie involves Chiyoko trying her butt off to find a tall, dark, and handsome guy she met for five minutes when she was, like, twelve. It’s so annoying when a female character gets her heart set aflutter by these idealized bozos. Sure, she was young and dumb, but the guy looks like he’s at least fifteen years older than her, which is kinda weird. Look, I don’t hem and haw over these intentionally controversial old-on-young people romances, like the Monica and Richard thing from Friends, but at least they GOT TO KNOW EACH OTHER FIRST.

This doesn’t help her as a character either. While it’s always fun [for Westerners] to watch someone descend into madness, her issues seem cringey and annoying. At least characters like Citizen Kane had REAL issues, his case being his own mother selling him to the freaking BANK, or Mildred Pierce, whose case I won’t mention because it’s a spoiler. Overall, Chiyoko comes off as a whiny brat throughout the film.

Fortunately, the two reporters are better. They have great chemistry with each other, and add a lot of humor to the movie that very much reminds me of Tokyo Godfathers. Also, they sort of represent the audience in some way. Tachibana comes off as the self-proclaimed intellectual who is totally into whatever the movie throws at him, and Ida acts like the trend-savvy, filthy casual who wouldn’t know REAL art even if it placed his head into its bosom. The fact that I’m not waxing poetic about Kon’s “Schrodinger’s Cat, quantum-reality-warping transcendentalist genius” or whatever means that I’m CLEARLY more like Ida in this case.

When it comes to visuals, despite being only a year or two before Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress looks much more aged. But even then, it still looks better than pretty much every TV anime these days. It also seems that Kon’s movies have a signature face style, similar to that of Ghibli. I hope that I don’t get sick of it if I choose to watch any more Kon movies.

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Final Verdict: 8.85/10

While I didn’t enjoy it as much as Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress was still a great movie, and proof that this Kon guy knew what he was doing. However, when you take away the whole “warping between past, present, and movie scenes” thing, it amounts to little more than a bog-standard tragic love story. This brings up the question of what’s more important in storytelling: The story or the telling? I’m a bit of a weird combination of both, but you’ll need to lean a lot toward the latter in order to enjoy Millennium Actress.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Volume 13 Review

by macksamson, posted in DanMachi, Light Novels

Last time on DanMachi, Bell made it to Level 4, which increased Hesita Familia’s overall rank to D. This means only one thing: Fetch quests! Now, they have to go to the Dungeon every day, get to a new floor, and come back with a bunch of crap to prove that they actually did it! Today, they enter Floor 25, a beautiful, watery paradise. However, on this floor is an enhanced version of the rare moss huge, which has gotten stronger by gaining EXP from other monsters. It deceives the party and they get separated from Bell. Bell meets a new Xenos mermaid named Mari, and she helps him reunite with his friends in time for him to fight the kids huge head-on. He uses a new combination of Fire Bolt and Argonaut to one-shot it like a boss. With their new victory, the team begins to head out of the Dungeon. But on the Floor 18 town, someone pops up saying that there’s been a murder! This would be setup for an arc where Bell is framed for some BS reason. But fortunately, the witness saw conclusively who did it: an elf named Gale Wind…

…whom at the time, I had completely forgotten was Lyu’s adventurer name! I don’t remember much of her backstory (even though it hasn’t even been a year since I read earlier volumes. Or, heck, it might be a marketing ploy to get you to read the Lyu Chronicle spinoff), but apparently, she killed some people, and that’s why she was working at the bar (i.e. to hide). Key word “was”, for she’s also vanished at around the time of the murder. That’s not incriminating at all.

Meanwhile, Cassandra has another prophecy, this time one where everyone dies. She more or less spends most of the volume perseverating on it, which doesn’t offer any help.

Of all the characters here, Lyu is the one who gets the character development this time. Unfortunately, this is probably one of the weakest character arcs in DanMachi up to this point. This series wasn’t too great on originality, but her backstory felt particularly checklist-y (professional term) to me. I didn’t feel any strong emotions this time around, which is weird, given that I’ve known Lyu much longer than Wiene from the previous arc. You probably get better context on this whole thing if you read the Lyu Chronicle stuff, but that feels really… jerkish, especially to me, who already has enough crap to be spending money on, and cannot work spinoffs into my budget. 

Heck, even the boss battle in this volume felt like torture porn more than anything else. DanMachi is admittedly a series that’s fueled by it, but- I don’t know- something felt off about it this time. The cliffhanger ending at least shows some promise for this new arc.

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Verdict: 7.8/10

I’m sorry, but this is probably one of the weakest volumes of DanMachi thus far. Lyu’s backstory felt meh to me, and there really wasn’t that much going on. But hey, every long-running series has its bumps in the road. Plus, whatever arc immediately followed the Xenos was destined to feel underwhelming anyway. Let’s just hope that this is the ONLY bump in the road for a while.