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Reviews
Gake no ue no Ponyo (2008)
Spoilers. So yeah... Ponyo kind of sucks, but in a kind of good way.
Let's get the Hayao Miyazaki-staples out of the way. The animation is beautiful, the camera-angles are great, the characters are fun, and the humour is sufficient, and duh: You're never too old for a Ghibli movie.
The characters are dumb. Really stupid; huge tidal wave that killed most of my crew, and there's a little girl leading too? "She looks about my son's age!". A huge wave that seems specifically aimed at your car.. and is? "That wave is SO after us!" A wave grows eyes and tries to eat you? "That was weird." It's so infuriating. Also, there's a tacked on plot about the end of the world. Isn't the budding friendship between two children - who share a sibling love - exploring each other's worlds enough? No. And the titular character's dad is planning to end the human race with a barrel of Mountain Dew.
It would have been absolutely perfect if not for the blunt, deadpan characters who really don't care, or don't notice, about the dangerous things happening around them and their common - and very disturbing - disregard for human life, or the forced, completely pointless plot point of the world ending.
Also, many people criticise the ending as "Some 5 year old promising to not destroy the world isn't enough.. he's 5." Firstly, Ponyo and Sosuke's relationship is much more of a sibling one; they're never shown to care about each other on a romantic level.. then again, they're five, and they seem very close, and they probably know that becoming romantically involved and their ensuing separation would probably destroy the world. So, that's all fine and dandy, and that criticism isn't justified.
I also find it very disturbing that Lisa drives very irresponsibly and neglects her child - though leaving them at home during a very vicious storm may actually make sense, seeing as how nobody in this film makes any sense anyway - and later, another child, who may or may not happen to the be the princess of the sea.
I want to rate it higher. But it's just not as good as Miyazaki's other efforts.
Nichijou (2011)
I cried laughing.
Nichijou is based on one of my favourite ongoing manga, Nichijou - which means, "simple". And just that, it is. It's the average life of Mio, an aspiring manga artist, and "Yukko" Aioi, the local village idiot, as they go through their simple, dull lives.
Cue to odd, odd situations, that didn't make sense in any of the writer's minds.
The animation's great, the source material is similarly well-drawn, the music, what little there is, is annoyingly catchy, and it's -just- normal seeming enough to pass as kind of normal. The only problem? There's so much poorly implemented English that subtitles - if you can't speak Japanese - are completely optional. And yet Keiichi is able to sneak in puns in Indonesion all the time. Then again, it's Kyoto Animation. It's also episodic enough to be able to jump in anytime, though.