Anime Review: 'Akira'

Source

Earlier this month at my local comic-con I bought myself a used copy of Akira, the landmark anime film that started the anime boom in the West. I had actually seen it a few months earlier online, and after seeing it I wanted to own it. So here we are.

The famous bike slide scene

Akira is based on the manga by Katsuhiro Otomo. Interestingly, the manga was still being produced when the film adaptation hit theaters in 1988, finishing in 1990. Otomo himself even directed the movie. What sets this film apart from other anime is that it is animated at 24 FPS (frames per second) and it shows the characters lip-synching, meaning that the voice acting had to be recorded before the animation. While this is normal for a Western animated feature, this isn't for anime; animation is mostly limited and audio is recorded after animation. Because of this, the film was the most expensive anime production until Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away in 2001.

Movie Review: 'Sonic the Hedgehog' (2020)

Source

I saw Sonic the Hedgehog with my sister and her friends last Friday, and, similar to Detective Pikachu from last year, I think it is a well made film. Not groundbreaking by any means, but still enjoyable.

There is an interesting story surrounding this film's production, of which you should be aware. Last year, the first trailer came out and Sonic's design was...less than accurate, to say the least.

Put that thing back where it came from, or so help me. Source

People online were furious that a big budget Sonic movie would portray him this way, and they complained and memed for days on end. This got wind of the director who, realizing that the film would flop if Sonic's sucky design remained, decided to change the release date from November to February and give Sonic a much needed makeover. The result is a better-looking design for the little blue hedgehog.

Much better. Source

Blu-ray Review: 'Neon Genesis Evangelion'

A week ago, I was browsing around online for home video releases of Neon Genesis Evangelion for the heck of it. Then I stumbled upon a link that caught my attention almost immediately. The website (that shall remain anonymous) listed a Blu-ray set of the entire Evangelion TV series plus the 90s films, all for $89. There were only 11 left in stock at the time, so I went ahead and bought it a while later.

Today I'll be reviewing the Blu-ray set itself, not Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I did, I would have named this post "Anime Review." I suppose in the future I can go over the series and films proper, but that's for another time.

As you can tell from the above image, this is a set of two Blu-rays. And I'll go ahead and say this right off the bat: these are bootlegs. As of this post there is no official physical media release of Eva in the West, excluding the Rebuild movies. There were DVDs made in the early 2000s, but those are now out of print and are outrageously expensive. And yes, I am aware that the series is on Netflix since last year, but it has a new dub and altered subtitles and excludes "Fly Me to the Moon" from the ending theme, because apparently Netflix can't get the rights to the song (despite the fact that they were willing to spend $100 million to keep Friends on their platform a while longer). Because of that, I prefer to stick to the original sub and dub. Ergo, why I bought this in the first place.