Animedragon

Bean Bandit and Rally Vincent. I'd forgotten about them, but now I vaguely remember watching this way back, good fun action show if I remember correctly.

It's bright, sunny and reasonable warm. All good signs after a cold and miserable January & February.

I think what you say is about right, we're never going to be rid of covid but it'll eventually just become another illness that we can catch like flu and we'll probably get yearly vaccinations for it like we do for the flu. I think the infection rates are showing a slight rise in some areas here in the UK, but the figures aren't reported on the TV news much now because the terrible situation in Ukraine has just about wiped every other news story off the bulletins.

"Orange", Your Lie in April ending 2. I finished watching the series two days ago, but Kaori's final letter still echoes in my mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6TFfhYl5WQ

Cautious, very cautious. I've just heard that one of my friends has got covid, a timely reminder that even 2 years on we still have to be careful.

I'm with you on preferring series to movies. My pet dislike in movies are the ones that are just a retelling of the series. I don't think it's possible to compress 5 or 10 hours of a series into a 90 minute movie without cutting out a lot of the context of the story, and what's often worse is that they make changes to the story which can sometimes be fairly major changes. In my view the best movies based on series are the ones that are either sequels or side-stories.

I posted my top 10 anime series list a while back, so here's my top 10 anime movies. 1. Laputa Castle in the Sky. 2. Nausicaa of the valley of the wind. 3. The Place Promised in our Early Days. 4. Your Name. 5. My Neighbour Totoro. 6. Whisper of the Heart. 7. Violet Evergarden- Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll. 8. Voices of a Distant Star. 9. Only Yesterday. 10.Macross: Do You Remember Love?

I watched "When Marnie Was There" today. Another beautiful film from Studio Ghibli with a touching but deceptively simple story.

Hi there and welcome aboard, here's a few movie suggestions for you: Nausicaa of the valley of the wind. Laputa: The Castle in the Sky. The Place Promised in Our Early Days.

I've just finished watching Your Lie in April for the second time and I certainly enjoyed it more the second time round. This is without doubt a very emotional and sad story, especially in the final half dozen episodes. However, it is also a very uplifting story, we see Kaori's determination to enjoy life and achieve her aims and not be defeated even though she knows she is seriously ill and may not have long to live. We have the other pianists Takeshi, Emi and Nagi who are all determined to strive to do their best and of course there's Kosei who with the help of his friends, and Kaori in particular, manages to put the shadow of his mother behind him and move forward and enter the musical world once again. Kaori slipped quietly out of the story without a big emotional farewell scene, but the letter and photograph she left for Kosei had just as much impact. This is definitely a series I will be watching again.

Ai Yori Aoshi. I wouldn't put this among the worst anime I've seen, but I would put it firmly among the most disappointing series I've seen. It starts of with Kaoru, a college student who lives on his own, meeting a pretty girl dressed in a kimono at a Tokyo railway station she's clearly lost and bewildered so he offers to help her find the address she's looking for. It turns out that she's Aoi his childhood friend, and betrothed fiancée, who has left her wealthy family's home to come a live with him. So in the first four episodes the stage is set for an interesting slice-of-life story about two young people living in a small Tokyo apartment against the wishes of the girl's family who are trying to convince her to return home. Then episode five starts, and oh, dear, Kauru's former girlfriends and female acquaintances start arriving on the scene and BAM the series has plunged into harem anime territory. I have this idea that there may have been some sort of disagreement among the production team with this series because the episodes swing back and forth between being a harem show and a serious slice of life show about two young people's relationship and as a result fails at being either. There was a second series, I saw the first two episodes at an animecon which convinced me not to bother with it.

I'm sorry, but I have to take a dim view of killing dragons.

It's certainly up there with the best soundtracks. Yoko Kanno created some excellent music.

Now that's one excellent crazy harem series. Often copied, but never bettered.

Thanks for your view on the movie. Next time I watch the series I'll give the movie another chance. Watching it a second time and straight after the TV series might change my opinion of it. It wouldn't be unknown for me to enjoy a film or TV series more second time round.

Madoka Magica : The Movie : Rebellion. So what was all that about? It started well enough but was quickly into the surreal psychedelic visuals that were the trademark of the TV series. Sadly amongst all this psychedelic surrealism the production team seem to have lost sight of the fact that a movie needs those things called "plot" and "storyline", yes, there's some impressive set-pieces but a collection of set-pieces, however good they are, strung together with a few vague linking scenes does not make a movie. Considering how good the TV series was I was expecting a decent storyline from the movie.

Just watched "Violet Evergarden - Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll". What can I say about this film? ...... How about... Kyoto Animation have done it again! This is an amazingly good film; a simple but beautiful story, absolutely stunning visuals and a fantastic soundtrack. The brief synopsis on the back of the disk package sells this film short, the film was far, far better than I was led to believe and easily the best film I've seen this year. I'll definitely be watching this again.

One of the things I don't really understand is why so many YouTube channels are just made up of other people's content. There's often no input from the YouTuber who runs the channel, it's just content that;s been appropriated from other sources rather than content the YouTuber has created themselves.

Suddenly 6 Celsius doesn't seem so bad. The winds still a bit chilly though.

When it first appeared in the late 1990's this series was very popular, mostly I think, due to its stylish and almost surreal artwork. I watched the first series but have to admit that I didn't really understand the storyline and I was left thinking it a case of style over substance and as a result the series didn't hold my interest.

While I'd not want to suggest that My Hime was one of the worst anime series made, and it's not by a long shot. It has an interesting and serious premise and storyline, but in my view it suffers from having far too many pointless filler episodes and a silly feral cat-girl both of which drag the story down. This storyline of this series had a good concept behind it, it took a good shot at the target, but sadly missed the bullseye by quite a margin which is a shame because it had so much going for it.

I found this rather nice English cover of "Michishirube" the Violet Evergarden TV ED.

I'm currently watching Maria Watches Over Us. On the face of it this series appears to have very little to commend it, it's about a group of girls at a private catholic high school. There's no real overall storyline, just the day to day interactions of the various characters. But it's those interactions which make the series worth watching, each character has her own unique and believable personality and there is a fairly complex set of relationships between them. It's an enjoyable, if quite slow moving and mostly serious series, but there is a fair bit of humour in it in both from the dialogue and visuals.

It's a good series up until the last two episodes. Which they completely botched, I've never quite made up my mind if this was due to running out of money, running out of time or just not knowing how to end the story, or perhaps it was a combination of all of them. Definitely not a series I plan on watching again.

It wasn't their fault!!