Anime

Star Wars: Visions – Season 3 Review

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The third season of “Visions” is an odd one. The first season had the whole fresh ideas and “weird, Star Wars made by anime studios!” thing going for it, and Season 2 had fresh ideas from animations studios around the world. This season is more shorts by anime studios, some of which are sequels to ones from the first season, so it all feels less special this time round. Some are good, some are middling, some are bad, as per usual with any collection of short stories, but overall I felt this was the weakest Season of the three. Let’s take a look, anyway (and with no Spoiler Section because that would just take too long to recap the ends of all nine shorts…)

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One Piece – Egghead Arc (Episodes 1123 – 1155) Review

David HoganLeave a comment

Time to look at the second half of the Egghead arc, which has a hell of a flashback story mixed in with plenty of over-the-top action and some leaps forward in terms of the overarching plot that has been teased for the last few DECADES. Very pretty to look at too, though there were plenty of recap episodes and breaks to allow this, something that will hopefully vanish now One Piece is switching to a seasonal model at long last. Anyway, let’s take a look!

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Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World (PS2) Review

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We’re technically jumping quite a bit ahead here, as the entire Budokai Tenkaichi (or “Sparking!”) games were released in between Budokai 3 and this game, plus the first 7th Generation game and true spiritual successor to the Budokai series in “Burst Limit” as well. This game was essentially a “make good” to people who hadn’t been able to jump to the next generation and were still on the PS2 and as such it feels very much like Budokai 3 with extra bits, and therefore it made just too much sense to have it follow on the Budokai trilogy in this set of four reviews rather than reviewing it all the way down the list. So is “Infinite World” really just Budokai 3 with extra bits or is it worth tracking down? Let’s take a look!

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Dragon Ball Z: Bardock – Father of Goku Review

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Time to close out this first of four chunks of DBZ with the first TV Special, “A Final, Solitary Battle: The Father of Z-Warrior Son Goku, Who Challenged Freeza”, or more simply for the English speak market: “Bardock – Father of Goku”. Really this should be with the Frieza arc stuff in the next batch of DBZ but that would make this chunk have three films/specials compared to… well, a lot more for each of the others, so for the sake of spreading them out a bit let’s consider this a “preview” for whenever I get round to the next  bit, plus it’s obviously set well before it and the Saiyan arc anyway, so… Yeah. The two Z TV specials have one thing in common and that’s that they’re far more mature and brutal compared to the manga/TV series they’re based on, with this taking a look at the Saiyans and how they fell in a story that in reality has no heroes in it at all…

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Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might Review

David HoganLeave a comment

The third DBZ film, “A Super Decisive Battle for Earth” or “The Tree of Might”, holds a special place in my heart as, for whatever reason, I’ve always loved Turles / Tullece as a villain. I think it was the voice work for the original pre-FUNimation dub of the film that sold it, and then when I got into the Japanese dub hearing Masako Nozawa do an evil version of her Goku voice didn’t hurt my opinion either. Much later on I found out that all of the “Tullece Crusher Corps.” had a paragraph of backstory written for them as well, weirdly fleshing them out too. But fun villain cast aside, is there much else to like about Movie 3? Let’s find out!

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Dragon Ball Z: The World’s Strongest Review

David HoganLeave a comment

The second DBZ movie, titled “The World’s Strongest Guy” in Japan and just “The World’s Strongest” in English speaking markets (one of the least edited titles of the bunch!) sees Goku and co. take on Dr. Wheelo, a scientist who has put his large brain in an equally large mech and wishes to transplant it into the world’s strongest body… for some reason. I mean, if he’s a scientist rather than a fighter I don’t really get the appeal, but whatever! It gives us Goku, Piccolo, Gohan and Krillin at their Saiyan Arc levels of power and throws in some love for Master Roshi while it’s at it, so it can’t be all bad. Let’s take a look!

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Dragon Ball Z – Dead Zone Review

David HoganLeave a comment

Time to kick off the “reviewing films/specials alongside a game after reviewing a chunk of the Z series” thing with the first movie… of fifteen, by my count (even if that last two are more well known as DB Super story arcs at this point…) which sounds crazy until you remember the first thirteen run under an hour and were just shown at summer festivals in Japan, rather than an actual big cinematic thing. Still though, they often offer fun mini-stories with good animation and some fun villains, so I’ve enjoyed them as the side-dish that they are. “Return my Gohan!”, or “Dead Zone” as it’s known in English speaking markets, is a fun one to start with as the characters are set at a pre-Z but post-Original DB state, making this rather unique. Let’s take a look!

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Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba The Movie – Infinity Castle Anime UK News Review

David HoganLeave a comment

Another one of those rare “cinema screener” reviews from myself (plus a review from a co-writer who actually went to a physical screening!) this time for the latest, insanely high-Japanese-box-office offering from the Demon Slayer franchise. It can be viewed by clicking HERE.

Basically, it’s more of the same, which given its the (first third of the) final arc makes sense!

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes – Season 1 Review

David HoganLeave a comment

While everyone is gearing up for the big final season of My Hero Academia in the autumn Toei decided to drop a new series in the meantime with Vigilantes, which was a spin-off prequel manga than ran alongside the main manga for a lot of its run so it’s not something they pulled out of nowhere, more odd that they chose now to start adapting it right before the main show ends. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, the humour was spot on as were some of the comic book caricatures / parodies, but a lot of its run time was very “of the week” which did affect the pace somewhat. Let’s take a closer look!

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