Tag: sequel

Ashes of Gold: The Sequel Curse Strikes Again

by macksamson, posted in Western Media, YA Novels

J. Elle’s Wings of Ebony was one of my favorite books of 2021. As someone who loved it, I would naturally want to read its sequel, Ashes of Gold. However, what other plot points could there be to explore? Only one way to find out!

Rue’s first year at Ghizon’s magic school was pretty lively. She ran away almost immediately, reconciled her relationship with her father, captured a White supremacist Ghizoni general, and—most importantly—made out with a strapping young man. Of course, the job isn’t done. She still has to take down the Chancellor, a.k.a. the mastermind behind it all. 

To be perfectly honest, I already had concerns for this one right out of the gate, simply because I wasn’t grabbed immediately like in the first book. It starts with Rue and Co. getting captured by the Chancellor’s goons, sure. However, Rue ends up displaying the tired trope of “doing a reckless thing and screwing up”, which ends up haunting her throughout most of the novel. This is one reason why I felt like she was downgraded in Ashes of Gold, which will be elaborated on later.

Fortunately, they escape pretty early, but they still have a mean ol’ White supremacist to take down. The goal ends up being to use a spell to bring back the Ghizoni people’s ancestors (sorry, Ancestors) and have them restore their descendants’ magic. Pretty simple, right?

However, that wasn’t exactly the case. A lot of Ashes of Gold is Rue and Co. traipsing around town and seeing how beat-up it is now, giving us more and more reasons to hate the Chancellor. Unfortunately, that’s about it for half the book. There’s some action, but it felt less impactful this time around.

It’s been exactly a year since I read Wings of Ebony, and I haven’t reread it since then. As such, I forgot who a lot of supporting characters were. Like, who are Zora, Shaun, or Bati? Was I supposed to remember them? I do, however, want to rectify my failure to elaborate on Bri’s character arc, since it’s kind of fascinating… and uncomfortable. Basically, Bri seems to represent those White people who want to fight racism, but simply don’t understand enough of the issue to contribute substantially. Rue has had to savagely tear into Bri multiple times throughout the duology, and she gets even more hate in this book simply because she’s Grey (a.k.a. the Ghizon’s equivalent of being White). To be fair, she is incredibly dense. One example is of her complaining about poor people stealing food; girl, it’s pretty damn obvious why someone would be reduced to committing those crimes.

I remembered loving Rue in Wings of Ebony. In Ashes of Gold, however, she’s… flawed. Sure, a good character needs some flaws through which to grow. However, Rue seems to be nothing but flaws this time around. She isn’t fierce or powerful, and is constantly hounded by the failed encounter with the Patrol at the beginning of the novel. And instead of bettering herself, she spends the whole book trying to get the damn Ancestors to fix everything for her.

Fortunately, things do pick up toward the end. There are sufficient twists, and the climax is satisfying enough. There are no plot threads left unresolved (as far as I could tell at least).

One thing to consider about me not having overwhelmingly positive thoughts on Ashes of Gold is the fact that I’ve since read Iron Widow. That book is just *chef’s kiss*. It’s so good that it makes a lot of YA novels—including the ones I like—seem like crap. And sadly, J. Elle’s works ended up not being exceptions. With that being said… 

~~~~~

Final Verdict: 7.85/10

Ashes of Gold is a solid conclusion to a great duology. However, there’s a lot better you can do, such as Iron Widow and Tristan Strong. 

The Marvelous Land of Oz: The First of Many Oz Sequels

by macksamson, posted in Children's Novels, The Oz Series, Western Media

I didn’t like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but I was curious about its future installments. However, when I opened up the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, I was immediately presented with an author’s note, straight from L. Frank Baum himself. To paraphrase, it said that he was compelled to write a sequel at the behest of his fans. 

This further cements my original point with the first book. Similar to modern bad isekai, the writing was bare-bones, the characters were brain-dead and inconsistent, and the world lacked any semblance of rhyme or reason. And the cherry on top… he’s making it up as he goes along! Well, as someone who loves battle shounen, I can’t immediately rule out the possibility that Marvelous Land could be enjoyable. So without further ado, let’s begin!

In The Marvelous Land of Oz, a boy from the northern parts named Tip has a crap life. He’s stuck slaving away for Mombi, an annoying old coot that nobody likes. As a prank, Tip creates a vaguely humanoid figure with a jack-o’-lantern for a head (creatively named Jack Pumpkinhead by the way). Mombi uses this Powder of Life she (illegally) bought and brings Jack to life, after which Tip grabs him and they haul ass to the Emerald City.

Right off the bat, most of the issues from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz are present here. The story is, once again, incredibly haphazard, with every action feeling incredibly arbitrary. In fact, Tip and Jack don’t even know why they want to go to the Emerald City in the first place. 

I can at least appreciate the gumption that Baum had at the time. The creation of Jack, followed by the eventual creation of the saw-horse (a log with a horse-shaped head) is a pretty direct defiance of God. Frankenstein, which was a hip new novel at the time, did the same thing. But since this was a kids series, what Baum did was much more controversial. And while Frankenstein is supposed to be a social commentary on how humans shouldn’t play God, Baum doesn’t even remotely make any ethical quandary out of Jack and the saw-horse. Of course, now that every other fantasy world has an evil religious cult, the ballsiness of Baum’s efforts are kind of… non-existent by modern standards.

But you know what, there was something else about Marvelous Land that can be considered pretty groundbreaking. The main conflict of this novel ends up being the Army of Revolt, who usurp Scarecrow from his throne at Emerald City. The big humdinger about this is that the Army of Revolt are all women, tired of sexism. Unfortunately, like before, this is another case of an already-existing novel for older audiences conveying themes better. Feminism was already a thing thanks to Jane Eyre (thank you, Friends episode, for teaching me that without me having to read it). 

Also, Feminism is presented poorly in this novel. First off, the Army of Revolt is incredibly stereotypical. Their primary motivation for storming Emerald City is to use its tax money on clothes and jewelry. Plus, their weapons consist entirely of knitting needles, which can definitely hurt, but are still very “womanly”. Furthermore, the reader isn’t allowed any form of interpretation or moral ambiguity when it comes to the Army of Revolt; they’re antagonists, which means they’re evil.

One of my biggest issues with Marvelous Land in particular is one scene that, honestly, makes me question whether or not Baum ever received an education. Tip and Co. obtain a magic item, and the conditions to activate it require them to count to seventeen in increments of two. Since seventeen is an odd number, this seems impossible. One logical solution is to count by halves in increments of two, thus counting in increments of one whole number as a result, which sounds like the solution that actually gets proposed. However, they count to .5, then to one, then just count in increments of two from there. I reread their explanation for how that’s supposed to have worked at least five times and I legitimately did not get that logic. Does the magical item round to the nearest whole number when decimals are worked in? If you’re a calculus major or something, then please comment as to how that’s supposed to work.

Fortunately, this novel has a far better sense of humor than the previous novel… I think? The thing about media from decades’ past is that we modern people find things funny that weren’t at all intended to be funny. One line of dialogue I actually chuckled at was them encountering some asshole, and Jack casually commenting “What a nice guy!” It was funny because I had no idea if it was actually supposed to be sarcasm or not (since Jack was just born). Also, someone needs to make an Oz tier list fast. In the previous book, we learned that winged monkeys are SSS-tier, even more so than any of the Witches of the Cardinal Directions. In Marvelous Land, we learn that twelve mice are more powerful than professionally trained military personnel. Again, I have no idea if it was meant to be funny or if Baum was off his rocker (since the whole story was improvised). 

The characters are also much better… to a point. Jack would be an interesting “robot” character, but he’s pretty much sworn absolute loyalty to Tip; add breasts and he’d be no different from your typical objectified waifu. Since he considers Tip his father, it’s probably a consequence of that fact that dad was the end-all-be-all alpha-and-omega of the household at the time. Sadly, that’s about it for the cast. Tip and Mombi aren’t too interesting, and Jinjur—the leader of the Army of Revolt—is too contradictory for her ilk.

However, there is a potential silver lining. Of all the returning Oz characters, the most interesting ends up being Glinda the “Good.” Notice the quotation marks? Since she’s Miss Helps Everyone, Tip and Co. end up asking for assistance to deal with the Army of Revolt. Bizarrely enough, violence is her first solution every step of the way, despite how good she’s supposed to be. This could be setting up for a very complex character later on (since she’s the star of that ominous-looking final book and all). Unfortunately, I could be reading too deeply into this. After all, this was the time when extremism in Christianity was more prevalent, and it was understood that any heinous crime is justified as long as the victim is “evil.”

One of the biggest redeeming factors comes at the end. Of all the gutsy things Baum tried thus far, the big reveal in Marvelous Land is legitimately huge, putting the book about a century ahead of its time. In fact, I don’t even think Baum himself knew how significant it would be when he was writing it!

~~~~~

Verdict: 6.85/10

The Marvelous Land of Oz isn’t great, but it’s better than The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (also, the illustrations are no longer superimposed over text). It at least gives me hope that the series will gradually get more and more trippy (and better) moving forward. Here’s hoping that I’m not wasting my time!

The Legend of Korra Full Series Review

by macksamson, posted in Western Media

Before I get into this review, I must say that the fact that I watched Legend of Korra is super ironic. I specifically waited for Avatar to come out on Netflix so I didn’t have to pay Amazon to watch one show. Now, I ended up doing just that to watch one show, when I could’ve used it to watch two shows months ago. Sure, I could’ve watched the first half of Korra on CBS All-Access, but I just didn’t feel like relying on two services to watch a single show (let’s see how long it takes for them to announce Korra coming to Netflix).

While I didn’t think Avatar: The Last Airbender deserved to be lauded as one of the greatest fantasy epics of all time, I nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed it when I recently watched it (link to that review here). I enjoyed it enough to watch the sequel series, The Legend of Korra, the day after. But one difference in my experience was that I had some basic idea of what Avatar would be like. As for Korra, all I’ve seen is one screenshot- with no context- that looked like it was trying to reference Steins;Gate. The 2010s were the start of an ongoing point in time where cartoons became more naturally influenced by anime (perhaps thanks to Avatar), so I was really curious as to how this show would play out. Let’s see if it improves upon its predecessor or suffers from the timeless “sequel curse”.

In Legend of Korra, set seventy years after the original Avatar, Aang inevitably bites the dust. Replacing him is a new Avatar named Korra, who already knows three of the elements. When Korra follows Aang’s son, Ten Zin, to the futuristic Republic City, she gets more than she bargains for!

I went into Korra expecting it to be so anime, that it wouldn’t be a cartoon. But when I saw the updated version of Avatar’s classic opening, I was surprised by how familiar it felt instead. However, that doesn’t mean Korra is a repeat of the original Avatar. In fact, season one starts with her having to learn Airbending, the one element that has not been touched upon before. They also try some genuinely interesting new ideas, including telling the backstory of the entire Avatar world from the perspective of the first ever Avatar (which ends up retconning the whole lore of the animals being the first benders and stuff but I won’t discuss that at length).

To be brutally honest, Korra is definitely a lot more anime than Avatar ever was. First off, the plot is much more focused right away. While most episodes have self-contained narratives, each of them has a fluid connection to the overarching story. This means less filler, woohoo! 

The show is also more anime in terms of its visuals. While it still behaves like a Saturday morning cartoon, a lot of aspects- from the textures, to color palettes, to lighting effects, etc.- feel very distinctly anime. It also helps that they outsourced the show to some actual Asian studios (I know I always talk about visuals last but it just flowed better for me to put it here, okay?). But in the end, the facial expressions and mannerisms show that this is the same Avatar that we’ve always known; it’s just a more organic union of Eastern and Western animation.

But sometimes, it does lean too far into the anime territory. On paper, that’s not inherently bad. However, in Korra‘s case, it ends up falling for some battle shounen shortcomings. Specifically, there are times where the show abandons the well-choreographed fights based in real-world martial arts for pure visual spectacle. This has happened in stuff like Dragon Ball and Naruto before, much to many people’s dismay. I’m pretty tolerant of mindless spectacle (“Boo, you filthy casual!” you think), but that’s only the case if the show sets that as an expectation. It’s jarring to go from the kind of battles in Avatar to stuff that resembles a Godzilla film in Korra. Also, I’ve never cared much for spectacle in TV form; animation doesn’t move me like really good manga art does.

When it comes to worldbuilding, the world of Avatar has definitely changed. There’s a lot of modern technology and politics in the  world now (typical fantasy mumbo jumbo). Even the recaps are done through early 20th Century-style radio broadcasts. But despite this, a lot of familiar elements, from the White Lotus, to bison, to- well- the elements, are still present and accounted for. They even found a way to integrate the cabbage guy meme into Korra!

On the flipside, it could be argued that they tried too hard to make the world feel like that of the original series. While the visuals are still a better marriage of anime and cartoon, the writers seemed to not know if they wanted to make the show feel profoundly different or nostalgic. At times, the results make Korra come off as a fanfic, especially with the cabbage reference I mentioned earlier. There’s also a lot of contrived throwbacks, like having characters such as Ten Zin’s brother, Bumi- named after Aang’s old friend- who happens to have the exact same personality as the original Bumi, or having a minor character voiced by Zuko’s actor. The occasional flashback to future Aang’s past (wow, that sounded like an oxymoron), where you see characters like Sokka and Toph as adults felt really cringey, and made me ask, “Was this really made by the same team?” 

As much as we can argue about Korra’s worldbuilding, there’s still the story itself to get into. With no Fire Nation, who’s there to fight? Well, in Korra, it just so happens that everything changed when the Equalists attacked. The Equalists are muggles, led by a masked man named Aman, who wants to do away with benders for good. Yes, this is the same “rich vs poor” theme that’s been in 999/1000 fantasy narratives, but it’s been a timeless theme for a reason (that reason being that it’s an overly-obvious parallel to our own society, and social commentaries are always “smart”). But that’s just season one. 

Another battle shounen trope Korra pulls is the “well that was a pretty satisfying conclusion to end on, but hang on this series is actually pretty popular, so I guess I gotta just keep it going somehow” that’s prevalent in many manga of the genre. I suppose that contradicts what I said about there being more focus, but that statement more so applies to the individual arcs themselves. This is due to circumstances around Korra’s development. The show was put through production hell, to the point where Nick ended up airing the final season online instead of TV. They did the show in this arc-based structure because if they didn’t, the show could’ve gotten axxed without warning, with cliffhanger endings unresolved.

This immediately makes Korra‘s narrative inferior to Avatar’s for one reason: lack of anticipation. The finale of Avatar was exciting because the show built things up over the course of its three seasons. But due to the episodic structure, Korra couldn’t do that. None of the final battles felt particularly exciting to me, even if they excelled in the visual department. Fortunately, the show somehow manages to maintain a consistent theme: balance. Like Ten Zin says in the intro, “Only the Avatar can master all four elements, and bring balance to the world.” It was pretty cut-and-dry what Aang had to do to restore balance, which was to get rid of Zuko’s bad dad. But in Korra, it’s not as clear. Every antagonist’s motive revolves around bringing the world into a new era that they genuinely think will be good (well, maybe not as much in the case of the season two villain…), and the show tries to make the villains more complex than Ouzai. There are two issues with this. One, like with the Equalists Arc I mentioned earlier, these narratives aren’t particularly original. And two, like in many battle shounen, the villains’ sound arguments are rebutted by the typical “No, that’s wrong!” of the nakama-powered protagonist, which doesn’t exactly leave stuff open to interpretation. But hey, kudos to them for working with what little they had.

They do go off the rails in the final season (which, by the way, has a recap episode almost identical to its counterpart to The Ember Island Players episode of Avatar). Despite the season being titled “Balance”, a lot of it tackles PTSD, in addition to a conflict formed by perhaps the most unsubstantiated antagonist in the entire Avatar universe. Seriously… this antagonist was a random guard in season three who didn’t even have a name, and that’s assuming they weren’t a random shoehorn. But like any shounen manga that loses its way, I found the final season to be an utter slog, which culminates in a theatrical, but unsatisfactory finale that felt empty due to the aforementioned lack of proper buildup.

In addition to the narrative, the cast shows more immediate issues than the previous Avatar. Korra starts off as a muscular Katara (which would be a more apt analogy if Katara wasn’t still alive as a gram-gram); a brash, overly tomboyish girl who thinks entirely with her stomach. Furthermore, she acquired a classic reverse harem in Bolin and Mako. Bolin is the cute, down-to-earth, funny guy (basically a Sokka clone but with less character development). Meanwhile, Mako is a dream boat that Korra likes, yet he friend-zones her for a Twinkie from the city.

Said Twinkie is a broad named Asami Sato. She’s a typical empowered, gorgeous, and idealized woman. There is NOTHING wrong with her, whatsoever, at least in terms of her personality. While she is very plot relevant, she happens to cause an annoying shipping war that governs much of seasons one and two. I would believe that her main purpose in Korra was specifically to trigger said shipping war… except her REAL purpose is not evident until the end of the series (and no, it didn’t make me like her any more as a character).

“Now, now,” you say, “don’t jump to conclusions. You yourself said in your own Avatar review that the characters started out lackluster, but became a lot better in later seasons. These same issues with the cast of Korra are no doubt minor kinks that they need to work out.” I was perfectly aware of that possibility, so I was willing to give Korra the benefit of the doubt. However, the cast doesn’t exactly work through their shortcomings. While Korra’s shipping war with Asami does conclude by the end of season two, she remains a brash, reckless drama queen to the bitter end. They tried to give her character development in season four, but they waited too long to do it, and thus it felt crammed in at the last minute to me. And while we learn more things about Mako and Bolin, they remain very unentertaining characters (and the latter is still a Sokka clone).

Another issue is that I never felt a sense of growth in terms of power. The original Avatar always made sure we saw some good training every so often. But in Korra, it feels like she just gets new powers thrown in her lap without her having to work for it. It’s typical plot armor, and I definitely acknowledge that Aang had some on him as well. In Avatar, the plot armor was from something that was established ahead of time, like Katara’s special water. But in Korra, there are some cases of random BS magic, and it’s definitely a step backwards from Avatar.

Fortunately, there is a silver lining. One of Japan’s rules is to respect your elders, and this shows in some of the older folk. Ten Zin comes off as a rigid sensei who screams “Don’t do this reckless thing!” while the main protagonist proceeds to do it anyway, and to an extent, he is. But he’s a great family man and has a surprising sense of humor who also learns some lessons of his own. We also have a hot grandma named Lin Beifong. Yes, she’s Toph’s daughter, and she packs the same sass and power as her mom. There’s also the aforementioned Bumi, whose eccentric personality- inspired by his namesake- makes him a chuunibyou; very anime. And while not technically elderly, an eccentric entrepreneur by the name of Varrick proves to be quite the wild card… and ended up being my favorite character in the series.

Final Verdict: ??/10

Writing everything in this review up until now was easy; after all, I’m merely just listing the pros and cons of the topic like I always do. But never in my not-even-one year of blogging have I ever had such a hard time giving the final score. My feelings about The Legend of Korra were divided well after the final episode’s credits rolled, even when taking the circumstances into consideration.

Recall how I kept saying that certain aspects of the show didn’t stack up to Avatar; some of the fights went for spectacle over choreography, there was no long buildup, there wasn’t as much character development, etc. One of the biggest arguments when critiquing a sequel is how to properly compare it to its predecessor. After all, some shows, like Steins Gate 0, explicitly went for entirely different vibes than the original, but because it wasn’t exactly like the original, it got burnt by some critics (for the record, criticizing a sequel for retcons is an exception). I was essentially doing the same to Korra. Is that really fair? If Korra wasn’t the sequel to Avatar, I’d view it as a typical shounen anime, complete with all the genre’s shortcomings. But because its predecessor had character development and great fights, I criticized Korra despite it being, ironically, more within my ballpark than Avatar.

Sequel or not, there are some elements of Korra that are bad in any context, and ones that Avatar did not have. First off, the shipping was awful. Even when the Korra-Asami-Mako thing was resolved, more ships took its place. Bolin has ships with SEVERAL women throughout the course of the series, as well as one of Ten Zin’s daughters. The one thing that they have in common is that they’re constructed too hastily; for the most part, characters are pretty much dating within the same episode or the following episode after they meet. Sure, this is another consequence of the production issues, but bad romance is bad romance.

There’s also the fact that I’m an adult man who’s been spoiled by a lot of the really good content I’ve seen over the years (and by watching it in 2020), and have not touched modern cartoons, a medium with entirely different standards than what I’ve been used to. Apparently, a lot of the appeal of Korra was that it did a lot of controversial stuff (at least according to an old article in Vanity Fair published the day after the finale aired). A lot of Korra felt typical to me, but apparently, cartoons sucked at that time; after all, a lot of the other influential cartoons of the decade, like Gravity Falls and Steven Universe, had only just begun. However, I don’t factor a show doing something for the first time in a given medium into the final score; I rate based on entertainment value alone. It’s the same issue I had with Chainsaw Man: the medium it’s sold on versus the medium that it behaves as. What I mean is as follows: my thing with Chainsaw Man was that it was super-gorey, with layered characters, and one scene where its main protagonist is straight-up offered free sexual intercourse. All of these are typical of seinen manga, which are targeted toward older teens, but because the manga is in Weekly Shounen Jump, a magazine for preteens, it felt a lot wilder as a result. In Korra’s case, a lot of tropes typical of anime, JRPGs, and even some children’s novels, are included in a cartoon. Should it be given a higher score just because cartoons in particular wouldn’t normally have content like that? Anyways, this post has gone on long enough. After much deliberation, I decided to give this show a…

Final Verdict: 7/10

Regardless of it being a sequel, The Legend of Korra had a lot of flaws that cannot go unpunished. And the reason why I don’t give it the benefit of the doubt as much as my favorite shounen manga is that Korra is a TV show. In a manga, a lot of shounen tropes are trivialized by the sheer fact that manga are books. If an arc is boring, I can speed through it. But in a TV show, I cannot. This applies to anime too, and why I watch them so infrequently. But in the end, Korra did enough good to earn a slightly-above-average score. I recommend it to battle shounen fans as well as fans of Avatar.

Hinowa ga CRUSH! First Impressions (Volumes 1-3)

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

I haven’t talked about Akame ga Kill! on my blog, so let me give you a short gist on how I feel about it: I love Akame ga Kill! It is a fun, edgy battle shounen with dark undertones and a surprising amount of emotional tension. Oh, and of course, the manga’s better than the anime! So with that out of the way, let’s dive into Akame ga Kill!’s sequel series, Hinowa ga CRUSH!, published in English by Yen Press.

The nation of Wakoku has been caught in a civil war for, basically, ever. Our main character, Hinata- who changes her name to Hinowa, taking after her mother who died in battle- dreams to end said war (pretty typical). It’s definitely a lofty goal. But fortunately, a familiar face washes up on the shores of her village, and just so happens to be pretty stinking powerful. (Spoilers: It’s Akame! *fan gushes*)

Despite the whole, you know, war going on, Hinowa is noticeably lighter in tone compared to its parent series. The first thing that’s easily noticeable is the fact that Hinowa’s friends don’t get slaughtered to death within the first volume, which is what happened to Tatsumi’s redshirted buddies in Akame. In fact, not a single protagonist dies in the volumes that I’ve read, other than Hinowa’s mom way at the beginning. This is a huge tonal shift compared to Akame, which had been memed as the “Game of Thrones of anime” while it was airing.

So while Akame got backlashed for having too many deaths “just for shock value”, Hinowa seems to suffer from the opposite; plot armor. We only see bits and pieces of training throughout the story, and it mostly comes down to them getting whooped by Akame in mock duels. It’s not enough to show how darn good these kids are during their very first battles. One particularly bad example is when this redshirted commanding officer gets one-shot by some other guy, while one of Hinowa’s friends- who’s still a greenhorn- manages to hold their own against the same exact guy. Maybe the author responded to the backlash in Akame? Or is this all a red herring before a dark tonal shift later?

Unfortunately, the characters have been downgraded from Akame. The whole cast of Akame either had a very expressive personality, memorable character design, or a creative ability. In contrast, the titular Hinowa and her buddies are just generic teenagers, and seem to handle being in the military as well as going shopping at the local mall; no moral quandaries here! The weapons in Hinowa are similar to the ones in Akame, but are nowhere near as interesting thus far. 

But what about the character we all came to Hinowa ga CRUSH! for: Akame? It has been a couple of years, but I remember her being way better than she is here. Akame goes from being a “tough-exterior-unstable-interior” type of girl to kind of a “perfect girl” type; powerful, but kind and supportive. While it is possible to follow Hinowa without reading the prequel, the context of Akame is important, or else you might think it’s strange that such a powerful woman just magically turned up when it happened to be convenient.

Another concern is the change in the artist. Overall, the new artist did a good job making Akame recognizable, but there’s a noticeable lack of oomph compared to the previous artist. All the over-the-top gore and expressions are toned down a lot, which makes Hinowa more “grounded”, but I’m still not a big fan. It could’ve been worse, I guess.

~~~~~

Current Verdict: 7.25/10

I don’t want to be one of those fans that’s like, “It’s not EXACTLY like the original series I loved so much, therefore it’s objectively bad”, but I feel like Hinowa ga CRUSH! is lacking the chutzpah that made Akame ga Kill! so great. With how different it is, I definitely can’t easily recommend Hinowa to Akame fans. Honestly, I’m gonna have to sit on this one for the time being.

Frozen 2 Movie Review

by macksamson, posted in Disney Stuff, Western Media
Poster of the movie, WHICH I DO NOT OWN. DISNEY OWNS IT!

PREFACE: I did not see a single review, rating, or opinion regarding this movie; I went into it with a completely open mind. So, the opinions you are seeing have not been influenced by anything besides the movie itself. Also, minor spoilers ahead. Nothing too bad, though.

Disney sequels have come a long way from straight-to-VHS cash grabs (that, admit it, we all loved when we were small and innocent), to theatrical releases that they put more chutzpah into. How does the sequel of the meme-able animated sensation that is Frozen measure up?

Frozen 2 starts with a flashback about the nobles of Arendelle and the people of some magical forest meeting up, having a BIT of a falling out, and the Anna and Elsa’s dad being saved by some mysterious voice. Years later (and after the events of the original Frozen), Elsa hears that voice, and it’s not long after that until Arendelle gets wrecked. Now, the original cast must go to that forest and see what the heck’s going on. This all somehow ends with the origin story behind Elsa’s powers.

Well, it’s not anywhere near as mind-bending as MatPat’s original theory on the subject, that’s for sure. In fact, everything about it seems too simple. When the actual reveal of her powers comes up, it’s like, “Yeah, so that’s it,” and the other characters kind of take it in their stride. However, as I will mention in a future post about the appeal of Disney movies in general, the narrative ends up being the most trivial matter.

The characters are what sell these things, and it is no exception this time around. As you’d expect, Elsa, the character who became synonymous with THAT song, is the one who is given the most character development. She, basically, well, learns about herself and that she should REALLY trust her buddies, just sayin’. Anna and Kristoff end up mostly involved in a subplot where the latter repeatedly tries and fails to propose to the former. This ends up creating some very cringe-inducing scenes, but they’re offset by something I’ll get to in another section of this review. Despite getting almost (key word) no further development, the kudos once again goes to Olaf, who has perhaps cemented himself as the greatest supporting protagonist in Disney history. His one-liners are cleverer than ever, including a hilarious abridged recap of the first movie.

Despite this, it seems that only the main characters were given any love this time. There are a lot of newcomers in this movie, and I already forgot their names (I literally just got home from the theater at the time of writing this). The worst offender by far is the purple Pascal clone; it is the Porgs of Frozen 2: cute, unnecessary, and marketable.

But hey, at least the soundtrack rocks. This time around, they seem to be pushing one of Elsa’s new numbers, “Into the Unknown,” as the next meme (even though “Show Yourself” is better…). However, the crown jewel of Frozen 2 goes to Kristoff of all people. His ridiculous power ballad, “Lost in the Woods,” rivals the timeless Spongebob classic, “Sweet Victory,” in terms of its amazing stupidness. It will not get nominated for Best Song at the Oscars (*cough* ‘cuz they suck *cough*), but I know in my heart that it’s the best. Regardless of what song I like and what you like, the soundtrack came out before the movie, so give yourself a listen if you end up liking it.

And lastly, the visuals are as astonishing as ever. The models don’t really look that much different (going off of memory), but they definitely did some new stuff with particles and lighting that they didn’t do in the first movie. I’m glad it wasn’t a downgrade from the first movie.

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Final Verdict: 7.6/10

Frozen 2 is something, all right. While I think that the first movie is better put together, and has some hint that they tried to build genuine tension, this movie has certain isolated moments that wholeheartedly surpass the first one. The soundtrack is also more consistent, so you can always look forward to another number, instead of the first one, which was like “Well, ‘Let It Go’ is over, it only goes downhill from here.” Due to many references to the original movie, you will need to have seen and enjoyed it get the inside jokes of Frozen 2 at all, so keep that in mind.