Watch me mumble and ramble in a time skip for a movie that, not only did I not know existed, but I didn’t know was in two parts!
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Before and After – Hideaki Anno: The Final Challenges of Evangelion
Neon Genesis Evangelion, was, and still is to virtually everyone who has seen it, an incredibly conflicting series for many reasons. If anything, I struggled to give you my honest opinion as to where to start with this franchise when writing this. To some people, it’s considered to be the greatest anime ever made. I’ll get to that in a moment. Others say that they can’t stand it for the life of themselves. Neon Genesis Evangelion has grown to be that one series for a lot of people to treat it as if there isn’t a middle ground for opinions, as if to say you either love it or hate it. That’s it! People love this series because of it’s action sequences and how philosophical it can be. People hate it because of how pretentious and full of itself it can be, as well as thinking that it is smarter than it think it is. Oh, and how the three child characters suck!
And then you have what the otaku community has done to the series for the past 26 years (the anime was released on 1995. This review was written in 2021). Many of the fans have went as far as dissecting the series’ meanings and finding some Christian meaning to everything that they can find. Well….
There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us. Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious. None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians. There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool. If we had known the show would get distributed in the US and Europe we might have rethought that choice.
– Kazuya Tsurumaki, Amuzing Myself to Death
http://www.evamonkey.com/writings/thomas-owen-kazuya-tsurumaki-amusing-himself-to-death.php
There was no way of me not mincing meat here. It is what it is guys. You wasted your time finding something that was never even there to begin with. Even I can’t wonder how or if Kazuya thinks about the fandom’s sceptic claims that there were any meaning behind it all. Plus, that info was written in Dani Cavallaro’s The Art of Studio Gainax. I only pulled it from a fan website to show you the quote. I don’t have a copy of the book.
You also have the internet and what it has done to Evangelion, going from trashing it on the internet, like Bennett the Sage.
As well as others sharing love for it, like Gigguk and his recent video:
And then, you have the memes.
As you can tell, the fandom of Evangelion is a giant water tapestry.
Now, for me. I started getting into the fandom as early as 2005, right when [adult_swim] aired the anime. I was pullend into watching the series, and my uncle let me borrow the anime on DVD for me to watch. This wasn’t my first visual conception of Neon Genesis, mind you. That goes all the way back, watching some old anime video takes that my uncle had back in the 90s. I was 10 years old, home sick from school, and he put on the first episode for me, which at the time, was very common to see. And then I didn’t look into the series after that. I just didn’t. Not until 2005, and I enjoyed it, even though I was kind of lost in the story at the time, where I gave up trying to understand what the hell I was even looking at. And as for End of Evangelion:
And just like that song that Hank-san was listening to, my point of view Evangelion started to tumble down too. The story is just too complex for me to understand, I felt as if Hideaki Anno, Kazuya Tsurumaki, and the rest of the staff went too far as to not knowing that they were doing, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. But, that’s not to say that I hate it. No, I don’t love it. I still think the anime is too full of itself to know it’s flaws. But I don’t hate it either. I do enjoy the mangas that Gainax and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto put out, and I only mean the main story, not the spinoffs. To my opinion, the mangas feels more focused and straightforward as to what they were making, the story actually has what I can consider to be a satisfying ending, oppose to what End of Evangelion and the last two episodes gave us, and it didn’t try to be pretentious, philosophical, or starter than it thinks. The newer Evangelion movies that came out in the last decade was okay, but I can’t say that I care enough for me to remember much about them, let alone be in a hurry to watch the fourth and final movie either.
And now, radio silence for me since Evangelion 33.3 for me. Until I saw Gigguk’s Thank You, Evangelion that I posted earlier, which gave me a better point of view from a die hard fan. I haven’t heard many people say that many positive things about this series for years, but out of the flack that I have heard for the past 17 years, it felt good to hear something positive that came from the heart of someone who genuinely loves this franchise from one of my favorite Youtubers.
And now we come to this documentary, which I will finally review. I found this on my recommendations on Amazon Prime, and I felt like I should do the one thing that I have never done before. I should hear from the man himself. You see, throughout half of my life, I have been hearing rumors, after rumors, after rumors as to what on earth even happened in the making of this series, and I never bothered looking into it myself. I guess it was my brief period of not giving too much of a damn about the series, even though I do respect it. But now I’m finally giving Hideaki a fair chance into looking at the creation, the people who worked on it, and how the show was actually received. So here goes nothing!
This is going to be pretty awkward. You see, by the time I decided to do this review and when I was writing the before part, I didn’t know that this documentary was going to be an episodic series. I really didn’t look into this show before doing any of this. Ooops! So this is what I’m going to do. I will continue to write this review, but I will only be watching as many episodes as this show will make. It only has two episodes on the time of writing this, and I will write my initial thoughts after I watch an episode. And by the way, this was done out of my own mistake, meaning that this will hopefully never happen again. So don’t get use to this.
Episode 1
The first episode begins with Hideaki, traveling around the Tokyo region from the looks of it, taking pictures of hills, buildings, shops, and malls. He also at one point goes into some detail about himself, liking to drink too much, being a picky eater, and expresses his love for electric poll lines, which kind of explains why the series is filled with them. He is also described by some of his coworkers to be more of a mysterious type, who doesn’t express himself as to who he is all the time, or rather talk all that much. Now that’s not to say that he’s antisocial. He does go to sushi bars with his coworkers and friends, he likes to work around with his employees, and he’s married. It’s just that, judging from what I have observed, he thinks differently from everyone else and views his own life. He talks about his inspiration for doing anime came from his eighth grade year from watching Leiji Matsumoto’s Space Battleship Yamamoto, the series that would eventually lead into making Space Pirate Captain Harlock.
the episode would go on to showing us how he works, giving us an insight as to how he makes anything. Just seeing how he does things is was interesting for me. Hideaki uses miniatures. Not miniatures of people or the Eva Units, but a miniature set of Tokyo 3. This set is huge! We’re talking about a set that is bigger than a small room, where you would have to walk on top of to adjust how he wants a scene to look like. If a car looks out of place in one scene that you want to animate, take off your shoes like Mister Rogers, walk on the miniature set, and fix that car placement! Hideaki says he does this because his imagination can sometimes be weak for him to think of something. So making something physical and working with it helps him so much better than trying to think about how he wants a particular scene to look like. This kind of stuff with creative talents and mental problems is nothing new. Hirohiko Araki has had this issue, and is still having this issue to this day. When he works on Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, he would often forget so many minor, if not, major details within his writing.
But Araki is aware of this issue so much, that he places a picture of Jotaro on his desk because he very often forgets how to draw him. I am not making that up. So seeing Anno work like this, not a common thing to see, mind you, but rather something that does happen.
Another way how Hideaki makes his movies is full motion body capture. I will be talking about this extensively, only because there were some things that I have learned from this, and for those of you who are not familiar with this technique, you might get to learn something new from this too. Gainax did use a studio, along with the usual tight latex suits with the white balls attached to them as we have all seen, but I never seen someone make a set with borders to make the rooms that the actors would walk into, that has wooden stakes placed with strings tied around each one, creating what would be walls, doorways, and rooms. Plus, these actors are given objects that would resemble the objects that they would use in the movie, that way, they would know what the hell they were doing by physically having something to interact with, rather than being told how to act out a scene like you’re some kind of mime on a blue mat.
I was going to make a rant about my previous issues with full body motion capture in this review, but I think it’s appropriate for me to do that when I review the final Neon Genesis movie. So, instead of that, I will discuss the big issue that some animators, film makers, and big movie buffs (depending on you talk to) usually have a problem with: doing things digitally. This subject has been, and always will be, the most heated argument known in the topic of special effects. Using computers to animate just about anything is obviously the biggest norm within the film industry. But most people hate the fact that it is the biggest norm in the film industry, mostly because it’s killing the old ways of making just about anything and everything.
One of the biggest opponents against using the modern digital techniques is Hayao Miyazaki. This is a man who tries hard all the time to avoid using CGI in all of his works, and whenever he did have to use CGI, he always used it for 10 percent of his movies. Now, I love seeing a hand-drawn animated feature as much as the next guy. But Miyazaki is nearing the end of his life. For crying out loud, he has gotten out of retirement 6 times already! Another example of an old animator who’s age is getting the better of him, but not even against digital animation like Miyazaki, is Don Bluth, a man who is well known for making such beautiful animated films. But he hasn’t worked in the animation department for a feature length movie since The Brave Little Toaster, which was released in 1987. He has only worked as a director, writer, and producer since. The only times that he ever got involved in animation was for video games and his short, Circus Sam, that came out in 2019. And again, he’s nearing the end of his life too, now being 66 years old.
Now, with all of that being said, almost no one, if not, no one at all in this day and age is going to settle with the traditional hand-drawn animation anymore, and relying on anyone to do that is really not going to be a viable option anymore. Doing things digitally on a computer found out to be helpful in many ways. It’s easier, faster, and less expensive if you can believe that last part. Most people might see this as being lazy or just making up excuses to get the job done. But sometimes that can give us better results than what we expect. To me, Demon Slayer is my example of being the top dog in today’s animation.
I don’t how much time and effort went into making this show look the way it did, but man does this anime look beautiful to see. The scenes that you see that are obviously CG look so good, that I can’t imagine it looking better in any other way.
With all of this being said, even Gainax has not only seen this work so well, but they’ve been using this in their previous movies for a decade already, and growing upon it ever since. The anime that was beautifully hand drawn back in 1998 has now grown to look better now with the help of today’s technology. Even the same can be said about the differences between seasons 3 and 4 of Attack on Titan, after the show transitioned from WIT Studio to MAPPA.
So in conclusion to all of this, no. The thing about going digital being an issue isn’t really an issue. Yes, anime has had a ridiculously difficult start on going digital. But anime has gotten better at this, as well as other 2D animation all over the world. A good example of this is The Simpsons, which might be the only good thing about it nowadays. I too was against all of this at first, but after seeing the end results of the last decade of animation, I can’t help but finally accept this change. On the end of the day, digital animation is here to stay.
Now I can come back from that rambling. The one thing that I can see Hideaki seem have his strengths is animation, as well as directing his films. But the one thing that will always be a constant struggle for him is telling a story. This has always been one of his biggest criticisms about the show since day one. Most people would think that the show is either too preachy, too pretentious, too heavy dialog, or all of the above. Hideaki Anno does nothing to hide these problems, as well as hide from them. He’s always trying to not make his story preachy, which I think he has gotten better since he’s started this reboot, and also tries to avoid repetition his own work, which makes his work life harder. He even based Shinji Ikari off of himself as a reflection of what he would sometimes feel like. And you know what? After seeing this documentary, I can see that in his own actions under stress. From his body language, all the way down to his behavior, I can see why he said he will never miss making Neon Genesis Evangelion. Anno tries to use this show to cure himself from depression that he has from time to time, but it obviously doesn’t work. That even tells us more about how he came up with Shinji’s character. Anno and Shinji might not be depressed for the same reasons, but they are both depressed from time to time, none the less.
Episode 2
Episode 2 kicks off with the telling of Hideaki’s past of how he grew up with a father with a severed leg from a work related accident, involving of trying to saw a log. From that idea, Hideaki would use that to draw robots with severed limbs, which would be used over and over again in Evangelion, and also in FLCL too.
One of his college friends who he met while attending at Osaka University of Arts would say that Anno would skip classes, work hard, and usually sleep in his work area rather than at home, all from aking movies. He would make the intro for Daicom III and IV, always aiming at making robot anime. That alone helped him meet Ichiro Itano, the legend behind the hits, like the Macross series, otherwise known as Robotech in America, as well some misses, such as Angel Cop and Violence Jack, aka, Bennet the Sage’s never-going-to-review anime. But regardless of their infamous reputations on his misses, his animation still shines regardless, which is what put Itano on the map, and was what helped give Hideaki a job working for him.
The one thing that blew my mind away, and one that I did not intentionally plan to put early on, was that Hideaki Anno went to work with another legend.
With Anno, it was kind of a dream come true to work with the most cherished men in, not just anime, or in animation, but within the whole film industry. Hideaki Anno would work in the animation department with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Grave of the Fireflies. But for Miyazaki, it was a different story. Don’t get me wrong, Hayao Miyazaki does love and respect Hideaki Anno. Watch this documentary all the way through if you don’t believe me with this description. It’s just that what separated him, from what I can tell, is creative differences. Hideaki kept on thinking that he was smarter than Miyazaki, and Miyazaki kept on thinking that he was smarter than Anno. Ever heard of the song, Duel of Fate from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace? Well, this was like Duel of Ego.
First, Hideaki Anno was able to send in his concept art to Gainax Studio on Neon Genesis in 1993 as promotional art, along with his first rough draft. Then comes the year 1995. What was interesting about the first half of this year was that the Great Hanshin-Awagi Earthquake in January 17 in Kobe City, destroying the city and nearby areas, as well as killing 6,434 people. And then you got the Tokyo Subway Sarin Gas attack on March 20, killing 12 people, all done by the Aum Supreme Truth cult that was lead by a nutcase named Shoko Asahara, who made people believe he can levitate. This all sounds incredibly insane to believe that Anno was able to put out anime that had to do with characters such as Gendo Ikari hating humanity, and having Japan going through events that looks like it’s the end of the world. But it did. On the sacred day of Wednesday, October 4th, 1995. Just one day after my birthday, Neon Genesis Evangelion was born.
Upon it’s release and throughout, Neon Genesis Evangelion was a successful hit. The EVA Unit designs were unique, the action was unique, the characters, for the most part, were great. The story, well, …uhhh, huh. Let’s just say that Hideaki Anno had a vision that was ahead of it’s time. I’m trying to touch upon the franchise as little as a can. I got a plan to review this whole series coming up someday. Unfortunately, this huge moment of success that started him off at the age 30 had to come to an end. If the saying “It’s not how you start. It’s how you finish” ever mattered, it should have mattered here. The finale was on March 27, 1996 with a run of 26 episodes, and it ended so badly for all of his fans, that he kept on getting hate mail, after hate mail, after hate mail, as well as going as far as sending him death threat, after death threat, after death, showing their hatred for the finale. They even went as far as showing off their hatred by vandalizing Gainax Studio’s front entrance.
Now, whenever a film maker sees a failure right before their eyes from their fanbase, they would usually be one out of three types of people. The first one would be like George Lucas, who doesn’t think what he made was bad, and move on to do the next big thing on his list. The second one would be Owe Boll, who would be so furious at you for hating his movie, that he would throw you into a boxing match, all because he can’t accept that his movie sucks. Thirdly, you got Ed Wood, who didn’t really care for what the critics say and just move on to making the next movie. But then you got Hideaki Anno. He was, and still is in a way, a different case. Here, he felt devastated from all of this hatred that was poured on his shoulders. Something that he built his whole career on ended up making him lose his own audience. There were even moments where Hideaki wanted to kill himself, thinking that what he had done was all for nothing saying that he didn’t want to make anime anymore. But what stopped him from doing so was said in four words: “The prospect of pain.” He said that he didn’t mind dying, but he didn’t like being in pain either.
Within this ten year gap of nothing happening, he tried to make a new anime from time to time, but ended up making something that resembled too much like EVA units. This doesn’t mean that Hideaki Anno lacks vision, but it appears to be so. Even Shin Godzilla wasn’t his original concept either. He was just a mega fan of Godzilla and wanted to make a series off of it. Unfortunately, this documentary doesn’t go into detail as to why Anno started to make the last four Evangelion movies. There were some things as to what I wish was in this documentary, and that was one of them. Another that I wanted to be in this documentary was the making and thought process of both Death and Rebirth and End of Evangelion. To me, I thought that could give us more for us to digest into his career, but instead, it just feels like this episode kind of skims right through some details that could of added more as to what we were watching. Hell, I would of love to hear his involvement on FLCL too, since he was part of the animation department for the series.
Another thing that this documentary left out was the fans reaction to the first three movies. Again, I will not go into too much detail on the franchise itself. I will later on. But the fans of this series was, not negative, but rather mixed. I believe that reason alone is why this episode doesn’t touch upon that part, but it would be good to know what they had to say about their thoughts on that. But what we do get was another stressful time for Hideaki Anno.
They at least do give us the courtesy to show us why there was almost a ten year gap between parts 3 and 4. Hideaki was right at the end of the series, but questioned to himself if he is able to do it. So from here on out, there was a pause on film making for part 4 from 2013 to 2019. His wife, Moyoco Anno, did try to jump in the dilemma to help him out, but it proved to her that she might not be enough. So Anno had the pleasure to work with Miyazaki once again, but as the voice actor for The Wind Rises, playing as the main character, Jiro Horikoshi. A designer for the Japanese Air Force during the pre-World War II era, working endlessly day and night to get things done, once proving that his plane was a success, that would eventually end up losing the war. Kind of a mirrored reflection on Hideaki Anno, if you ask me. During this process, Anno would open up to himself to Miyazaki about his issues with trying to figure out if he should even finish up his work and if he still has it in him. Miyazaki gave him the shortest, but best answer ever. He told Anno to keep being himself and always keep trying. This advice is coming from the same man who’s first impression of Hideaki looking like a space alien who barely ever bathes and sleeps under his desk, to telling him to continue to being yourself at this project.
So on March 2019, Hideaki Anno and his Gainax team goes back to work with the first draft of the script being emailed. They would then get the voice actors to come and do their roll one last time on January 2020, with some trying to do with through their tears, especially for Kotono Mitsuishi (Misato Katsuragi) who cried the most. And since this was 2020, they obviously had to postpone the movie for a year later. Eventually, Evangelion 3.0+1.01: Thrice Upon a Time was done. The franchise was officially over. Hideaki Anno can finally go off and do other things in his career, never to touch Neon Genesis ever again.
Going back to how the first episode of this documentary started, where Hideaki Anno said he will not miss making Evangelion truly shows us his, as well as the rest of the staff, how he felt throughout these 26 years. If there is anything that I took from this documentary, its that I will never understand how hard it is to write a story. Sure, we as an audience knows it’s painfully hard to pull off a good quality story. You have to know what you need to write for a plot, premise, beginning, middle, end, what the characters are going to be like, what’s the conflict, the resolution, trying to not leave any plot holes behind, and a ton of other stuff that I know I’m leaving out for the sake of I want this review to be done. This can’t last forever folks. But even if we knew everything there is to making a story, let alone a whole movie, unless you have done it, we will never know how excruciating it really is. Not even I’m sure if I can do that, especially within that magnitude that higher level film makers did in the past. George Lucas had to keep on making his director for The Empire Strikes Back to make the movie right, along side with several other production issues that cause his wife to divorce him. Francis Ford Coppola had him and his crew try to avoid war zones in The Phillippines and almost made Coppola want to kill himself 3 times when making Apocalypse Now. Steven Spielberg said that he would never want to direct another World War II movie ever again after 1941 bombed, but ended up redeeming himself from that disaster by making Saving Private Ryan. As for Hideaki, he almost killed himself after failing to make a good story.
There are times where I tend to ridicule a bad film, book, video game, or tv show that failed to deliver what it needed to do, like Lost or Alien Covenant. But I always want to wonder what made it turn out the way it did? Just how did everything that could go wrong went wrong? Most of the time, I just feel like I’m the villain for doing such an act, but it’s really rare for me to know that I was in the right. I mean, how am I suppose to feel guilty of the way how Michael Bay’s Transformers ended up the way it did? All that I am doing for the most part as a critic is criticizing the way how I’m seeing things and seeing if it can be done in a better way. And for years, I felt the same way about Neon Genesis Evangelion. But now, I feel like I should go back and give the series another chance. What if my criticism was kind of unfair this entire time? That’s what I want to do. I will review all of the Neon Genesis franchise someday. I just can’t say when.
Overall, I do recommend you give this two episode documentary a watch. Right now, it’s only available on Amazon Prime (not a sponsor). You might find something out of this to take out of. I know I did. If you come into this documentary as someone who hated this series, you might like it too. It does give you a better understanding on how animation is made today, especially for 2-D animation, so there is something for those who are trying to get into the business or who are in the business. It’s a good documentary with a few things that I think they could of crammed in that I addressed, but they were only less than minor to my opinion. Give it a shot!
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Doctor Who – Listen
If there is something that we all might have asked ourselves once in a while in the realm of entertainment, its how does a film maker go from being one of the greats to one of the bads? What I mean is by their ability, and not their reputation
with the fanbase. That alone deserves it’s own topic for some other time. What I’m saying is how does someone with such talent can just stop using the talent that made them famous. For example, both George Lucas and M. Night Shyamalan started off strong by using their talents on revolutionizing the genres that they both individually made. But they were so happy with what they were doing, that they really forgotten that every film maker should have restraints. But because of how famous and powerful they have become, they kind of seem to live like they can get away with anything. I can’t confirm any of that, but that’s just how it appears to be. The same can be said about MY feelings towards Steven Moffat.
I started watching Doctor Who right before season 6 started, and I watched a great portion of the show before then. I even saw a lot of Moffat’s episodes before his takeover on the show. Even after watching season 5, we all treated him as if he was going to be the next Robert Holmes. Even I was excited to see his work for season 6. But right when season 6 started, I felt like there was something missing on the end result. Even after I saw The Wedding of River Song, I felt like his episodes were kind of meh for me. Season 7 was a pretty rough year for me when it came to Steven Moffat. Asylum of the Daleksjust keeps getting worse the more I think about it, The Angels Take Manhattan was just forgettable, The Bells of Saint John was okay, and The Name of the Doctor felt like it was just there for exposition. Both The Night of the Doctor and The Day of the Doctor were him at his strongest, and I do believe he was actually trying to write good, coherent stories. I will get into those two sometime in the future to give my extensive opinions on those stories. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that The Snowmen was just awful. I already gave you guys my two sense on what I thought about the episodes that he wrote in season 8, but in case if you don’t remember, here’s my review of season 8:
So, did I just bring those episodes up as a list of future reviews? Maybe. But I must concentrate my wrath on what I use to believe was Steven Moffat’s worst episode. Oh yeah, I think it’s that bad! And before you Moffat fans try to defend this episode, telling me that this episode was great and is bound to be a classic, and those who think that this episode sucks and that I just hate Steven Moffat as a writer (which isn’t true), I only have one favor to ask you all. Please, PLEASE read my review first, and then you can comment on what I have to say about this not-scary-at-all episode.
We begin with the Doctor meditating on top the TARDIS, as he tells us all to listen. People, from here on until the end of this article, One of the first things that he asks is why do we talk out loud when there is no one around to talk to. He states that its because there is someone really around hearing you. No, we have a number of reasons for why we talk out loud Moffat. Sometimes we’re just crazy, and sometimes we just naturally do it when we never notice it. And sometimes we think out loud to wonder if what we want to say sounds right. At least that’s what I do. Yeah, I’m kind of pathetic that way. I’m just going to stop right there.
The Doctor then asks if evolution has perfect survival skills (which that can be flawed), perfect defence (even that can be flawed), then why isn’t there perfect hiding skills? The Doctor continues to think that this specific monster is hearing him out on all of this, wonder what it wants to do, what it wants, and what it is. He then sees the chalk that he was using to write down his theory on the board that he placed on top of a book suddenly laying on the floor, and then sees the chalk board being erased just to show us one word:
Everything that I have said about this scene and what the Doctor has been saying, I want you to try to remember it all. I’m not going to explain why right now, but I will later on.
I haven’t said a thing about the new intro yet, so I’ll talk about it now. I love it! As much as I admire the previous two, and as much as I still have the 7th Doctor’s intro as my personal favorite, this one is, by far, the best one in New Who. In case if none of you have not seen a single second of the 7th Doctor’s intro, do yourself a favor and look it up. …………….and watch Remembrance of the Daleks, far superior than this episode and Asylum of the Daleks.
And after the best part of the episode ends, we get to the most uninspiring companion since Martha Jones, Clara Oswald. I say that, because she doesn’t have that much of a personality or a purpose to be in this show anymore. She’s like if you get rid of all the things that you love out of Sarah Jane Smith. She goes out on her first date with the other uninspiring companion, Danny Pink. Even though his treatment in this show wasn’t as bad as Mickey’s, where he was a suspect for a supposed murder of a white, blonde she-devil, Danny still gets the rest of Mickey’s flack and disrespect from his time in Aliens in London/World War 3. The more I talk about that episode, the more you should fear the time come when I might rip the earth apart with my wrath and fury! Oh yeah, I’m going to tear that story apart, and it will dwarf my anger that I have put upon Steven Moffat!
Anyway, we do get to see the two laugh a bit, but we never get to hear much out of it, probably because Moffat wants us to prevent ourselves from finding something about the two that we would probably find enjoyable from either one of them. And then we get to one of the biggest no-nos that Clara makes against Danny. What they were laughing about, or at least I think they were laughing about, is some student who’s been causing trouble in their job, and Clara jokingly said that Danny would of went as far as killing her. Danny finds that sensitive, since he was a soldier with a backstory of killing a child that ended with a HUGE DUD, and said that he dug 23 wells that saved so many lives. Clara apologizes to him, not knowing that it was sensitive, but how does she ruin that? When a waiter offers for more water, Clara, right after she said apologized to Danny about the wells, said “don’t you worry, he’ll probably dig for it.” Clara, I know you are not as bad as Rose Tyler, but still better than her. Take that for what it’s worth. But what you just said was terrible. Here’s a man from Into the Dalek, who wanted to ask you out and is very interested in you, and really cares for you, for some reason (I really don’t know. This show really doesn’t give us a reason). Then you have Clara, who comes in all nice and sweet, and then insults Danny right in his face and to the waiter. WOW! This is simply Clara’s worst moment in Doctor Who. I cannot seem to find anything from here on forth to redeem her character out of what she just said. Now, Clara is finally put on the wall of shame of bad companions.
As for their relationship, I have no idea why they love each other. This show fails to reveal to us what made these two fall in love with each other. The Simpsons showed us how both Homer and Marge came together, and it was really good. Futurama, even though it took them several years for us to see both Leela and Fry come together, it showed us how they both came together. This show doesn’t care for any of that. You can say that it was revealed by explaining, but one of the most important rules of the camera is show, don’t tell. And their chemistry just doesn’t seem to be seen anywhere within this whole season. So, no. I don’t buy this relationship at all. I’m sure that I’m leaving some more details as to why I don’t like this relationship, but I’m sure that I will get into more of my issues with this some other time.
So, how does this date end? Danny and Clara both agreed that it was a sensitive subject to him, but then Danny said that people like Clara would make that kind of mistake. Now I don’t know who to side with here! Sure, I’m mad at Clara, but come on! Don’t be this rude to a woman Danny! You just ruined what could of saved your date night. And you want to know something else about this moment? We’re barely past the 5 minute mark! If you think that you’re now starting to understand why I hate this episode just from these first 5 minutes of this episode, you better hold on to your buns. I’m just getting started.
After watching some of the most insufferable date nights that I have ever sat through, Clara walks back into her apartment, just to see the Doctor parking his TARDIS inside. The Doctor says that he needs Clara to perform the fear factor theory that he proposed earlier in the episode, wondering if there is a boogey man in real life or not. By doing this, he uses Clara to put her fingers in a device called a TARDIS Telepathic Interface, that looks sort of like giant ice cube trays.
What it does is that it allows you to have mental contact with the TARDIS to travel anywhere from your history, from your birth to your death. I don’t know why the Doctor can’t just do this by himself. This is a pretty unique concept, but have some issues on how it works. Trust me, I will get to them as I continue.
The Doctor tells Clara not be distracted when she uses the contraption, but her phone rings, making her think about Danny. The TARDIS lands outside of a children’s home in Glasgow in the mid-90’s, you know, the time that gave us lovable gem:
My surprise is that movie was made by the same director of both Robocop and Starship Troopers. What a strange world we live in. Wait a sec, this episode was written by the same guy who made Blink and The Girl in the Fireplace. How ironic that both people made such insultingly bad things in life. But I digress.
Clara tells the Doctor that she has never been to Glasgow in her life, nor has she ever been inside of a children’s home before. Clara asks what if they got distracted during the process, and the Doctor says that they could of accidentally have traveled into a different time period. He said this, even though he knew that Clara was distracted. Why doesn’t the Doctor check to see if they’re in the wrong year and location is anyone’s guess. His TARDIS does have information on her life, as well as those times when he was examining her life and her parent’s life in The Rings of Ahkaten, which was far superior than this. Bottom line, the Doctor should know that she never lived in a children’s home in Glasgow!
Clara sees a kid from the top floor of the house who reminds her of Danny, and he tells her that his name is Rupert Pink, and he thinks that Rupert is a stupid name. Kid, your name is fine. There’s already a small handful of boys who are named Adolf Hitler on this planet. The Doctor investigates inside of the home, and finds the guy who watches the place at night. The Doctor then asks if the man has ever seen anything move on it’s own, and then hears the tv from the other room turn off, and sees his coffee mug disappear. Again, I want you to try to remember this scene. Believe me, this will be important later on.
If any of you have watched this episode before (and I’m sorry if you have, but if you enjoyed this episode, then I envy you), you may have notice that Murray Gould composed the score to this episode like it’s the scariest episode ever made. There’s nothing wrong with the songs themselves. They sound creepy, and they sometimes used in the right, appropriate scenes. I think I would play this again on my own during Halloween. But the rest of the time, they’re used in moments were nothing scary is happening. For example, when Clara uses the telepathic interface, there is creepy music going on, but nothing scary is happening. You know what that’s like? Try to imagine those scenes from Forrest Gump where Forrest is only talking on the bus stop, while listening to the score from A Nightmare On Elm Street. It wouldn’t work. Okay, maybe it would, since the first three people he talks to were a black woman and a mother with her child, offering some chocolate.
Anyways, Clara goes into Rupert’s room (clearly nothing wrong with an adult just walking into a child’s room in the middle of the night), and asks why he doesn’t want to sleep on his bed. Maybe it’s because the last thing he saw was this:
Seriously, I, as well as you, should be watching A Nightmare on Elm Street over this. Just avoid the remake.
So, Rupert thinks that there are something underneath his bed, and Clara wonders if he thinks that something grabbed him on his foot. Clara tries to comfort him that it was a dream, and dreams aren’t real, meaning that the monster is not real. And then Clara asks her to go under the bed with him……
And come to think that she would be dating him in the future. So, during this horrifying moment with Clara and Rupert, we get a scene that tries to be horrifying. Something sits on the bed! Clara gets out from under the bed and sees the monster underneath the blanket.
Clara thinks that its one of the kids playing a prank, and then it starts to stand up.
The Doctor happens to be in the room, sitting on a chair, looking for Waldo (for you British people out there, yes. I am calling him Waldo), and sees the monster on the bed. The Doctor talks to Rupert that its okay to be afraid, and then does the one thing that ruined this monster for me. Really, this is the one thing that caved in on everything that could have made this monster worth being terrified of. The Doctor tells both Clara and Rupert to turn around, and don’t look at it. And you know what? It disappears! Okay, let me get this straight. Steven Moffat. The man who is well known for terror. The one who can and successfully write horrifying monsters. The one who can come up with great defense mechanisms against the monsters that he creates. Weeping angels: don’t blink. Great! The Silence: Don’t forget. Still Great. The Teller that will come out an episode later: Don’t think. Again, great! Now, this monster, whatever the hell it is: don’t look at it. Not gonna lie, that’s very weak. Are you to tell me that this monster that Steven Moffat is trying to push, that makes us wonder if there is a being with perfect hiding, that is suppose to be terrifying, and it goes away from just not looking at it?! That’s just stupid! Why?! WHY?!
This is the most non-scary thing you can ever do to any monster. This is like if the only way to get rid of Leatherface was to not look at him, just so he can just walk away. I can’t believe that so many people consider this episode to be scary. There is nothing about this episode that was scary. Well, seeing Clara under the bed with a child was kind of scary, but it wasn’t because of the monster sitting on the bed. And, Doctor, didn’t you want to see this monster for yourself? And don’t tell me that he made it go away because he didn’t want the kid to be in any danger. He wanted to take young Amy Pond with him to defeat prisoner zero. Not only that, but how does the Doctor know not to look at it, and then it will go away? This is his first time trying to get rid of it. Holy mother of all the things that are good on this blue and green planet. This is SOOO STUPID!!!!! Oh, and another thing, do I think that there was something under the blanket? I’ll get to that later, along with everything else that I am holding back until the end.
So, after getting rid of the biggest letdowns in Doctor Who history, Clara helps Rupert to get him not to be afraid by placing soldiers in front of his bed, as if they’re watching for the monster not to come out and grab him. Clara says that the soldier without a gun is the leader, because he’s so brave that he doesn’t need a gun. Yeah, but he’s no Chuck Norris, who doesn’t need anyone or anything to help him. Rupert names this soldier Danny! Yeah, that will come into play later on. And then Danny falls asleep in the only good part in this episode. Clara wanted to tell Danny a bedtime story, but the Doctor knocks him to sleep with his psychic ability, and says “Once upon a time-the end.” Still gives me a smile on my face. Back inside the TARDIS, the Doctor tells Clara that Danny won’t remember a thing about that night, thanks to his psychic ability.
Clara decides to take on round two of one of the most awkward date nights ever televised. It starts off good, until Clara calls him Rupert by accident, hearing something shatter in the background. No, I’m not kidding about that for one second. Danny is mad at her for calling him that, because he still thinks that Rupert is the most evil name in the universe. It’s been around 20 years, and he still has an issue with that name? Why? Would you rather have these names instead?
And during this stupid quarrel, there’s a guy walking inside of a space suit in the background.
At first, I had no idea what was going on. The tone in this scene just looked out of order for me. Is this suppose to be funny? I’m more enraged and confused! That was until that after the world’s crappiest date ends, Clara follows the man in the space suit to the TARDIS in the middle of the kitchen (nice parking there, idiot), Clara gets mad at who she confuses herself to thinking that he was the Doctor. I say confuses, only because he wasn’t the Doctor. He’s Orson Pink from the future.
Why on earth would you make a scenario with a character who isn’t comedic in any way, and make it look awkward and funny looking? And you know what? The Doctor calls this a bit strange.
You know what? We’re on to the third act of this episode. I’m just glad this episode is almost done at this point.
The Doctor says that Orson Pink is from a hundred years from Clara’s future, wondering if she has some connection with him. The way how the Doctor found him was that when Clara thought of him in the telepathic interface, she left a trace of Danny Pink. Why is it just this particular person from the Pink family tree is beyond me. The TARDIS found Orson Pink on what the Doctor describes to be the last planet in the end of the universe, being the end of time I believe. No, wait. If this was in the end of time, then this episode should be taken place in Utopia. No, there’s a sun out there. From what I also remember, there were carnivorous humanoids with razor sharp teeth and tattoos. And for some reason, the Doctor said that the TARDIS isn’t suppose to take them this far. ………..but it did. ………….in Utopia. ……and that episode was far better than this. So, where is this suppose to take place? I have no idea. And for someone who traveled deep within the end of the universe, one can wonder how he even made that base on his own. Or wait, was that base already there? Did he get help? Well, this episode was written like he was the only one who got here from time traveling (which that within itself makes this plot hole even bigger, by the way), so I just have to assume that Orson made this whole place all by himself, without any humanly possible way of him getting any resources or materials. Within 6 months. Yeah, I almost forgot to mention that OTHER DETAIL, which makes this plot hole bigger than ever.
The Doctor questions why the airlock to this base is locked if everything outside is dead, and Orson says that there is something out there. Okay, remember when I said for you to remember all of the scenes that I told you to remember, like the beginning monologue, the monster, whether or not if it was real? Now I can vent all of my anger that I’ve been holding back. One, I don’t know what any of you think about this, but I do believe that Orson Pink is suppose to be Danny Pink’s future relative. I say that because I know some of you are thinking “well, Orson Pink can’t be related to Danny, because Danny is dead. I mean, how is that possible if Clara wasn’t pregnant with him?” Well, this episode really tries to make that clear, because he said that he came from a family of time travelers, and he happens to have the same toy soldier that Danny had as the leader of his army as a child.
Orson calls this toy soldier as an heir loom. So add all of this up and you see that Clara was meant to bear his child. And no, it was already establish that you can’t mess anything up with time, thanks to the time reapers from Father’s Day.
That, and just because Clara had a post it that said that she might pregnant in Dark Water, doesn’t mean it confirms anything. Not even in The Magician’s Apprentice does it show her in any way being pregnant or even having a baby.
The other thing that I have to raise my fist on is that there are sounds coming from the outside. Wasn’t one of the things that the Doctor question is why is there no such thing as perfect hiding? I know that he never confirmed that, but it seems that this show tried to create a monster like that. And this monster sucks at it! It makes too much sound, and it hides underneath a blanket, puts weight on a bed, and uses chalk. Actually, that brings me to my other point. Remember when I said on whether or not if I believe that this monster is real? Well, after watching the chalk movie away and being used, after seeing the monster move, getting on the bed, getting off the bed, and taking the blanket away, and AFTER HEARING AND SEEING THE AIRLOCK OPENING IN THIS SCENE, AS WELL AS KNOCKING, I really demand a huge, honest question from you all: did YOU believe that there was nothing there in that bedroom? People have had debates on whether or not that this monster was real or not, whether if there was ever anything there. Why?! This episode was never written, directed, acted, or even performed to give you the choice to make up your own interpretation. This isn’t like Inception or The Fountain, where those movies were clever to make you think about that and leave it to your interpretation. This episode, to what I have seen, does not do anything like that for you. This shouldn’t even be a debate.
The Doctor demands Clara to get into the TARDIS, but he wants to stay in the base when the airlock opens. But when the airlock opens, the air takes it’s time to suck the Doctor out, leaving him hanging, even though the air would have been gone with the time he was out there. Yeah, it should have been too late for Orson to rescue him. Well, actually, there is an air bubble around the TARDIS, so I can let that slide. The three of them think that they are safe and sound, but then the monster tries to break into the TARDIS. Wait a moment, the monster was inside of the TARDIS in the beginning of this episode, so how is it having such a difficult time getting in? As a matter in fact, when and how did it get in and out of the TARDIS to begin with?! It’s like Moffat knew that there would be a Latino in East LA with long hair, who knew that he hated Asylum of the Daleks, probably have read his review, and came up with the perfect idea to make him more mad than he already was.
Clara tries to escape with the telepathic interface, but gets distracted by the Doctor, and lands inside of a barn. Just wait, there’s a reason for why they landed there. Clara sees a young boy who is crying in his bed in the barn. She thinks that he is either Rupert or Orson crying in his bed, until his parents or whoever they are, comes inside. I can’t specify, only because when they want him to come out of the barn, they say that he can sleep with the other boys, but they are never referred as his brothers or other family members. Clara hides under his bed, just to figure out that this kid, and I am not making this up, is the Doctor. No, really. The man says that if he keeps this up, crying on his bed in the barn, then he will never become a timelord. Oh, and those people never noticed that the TARDIS was in the barn. That thing is lit bright for crying out loud! How can you miss that?!
This brings me to my last and final thing that I wanted you to remember. Remember how I told you that I had issues with how this works? When the Doctor said that this works within the timeline from the person who uses the telepathic interface, why does it work on other people that you think of? The Doctor never said that this happens when you’re being distracted, which that’s what happened to Clara twice already. If the machine worked the way the Doctor instructed, then she wouldn’t be in Galifrey. And then Clara gives a speech. Oh, what joy! Another speech! Why on earth must New Who be cluttered with so many speeches?! When Old Who did the speeches, it was for only one incarnation of the Doctor at a time, with the exceptions from both the 3rd and 5th Doctors. Here, its like both Davies and Moffat think this is necessary. And this isn’t any other speech that is tossed into this episode. This is a speech, coming from Clara. About how the Doctor came to be. Is this really necessary? I didn’t need to see how the Doctor came to be. As a matter in fact, Old Who established a number of times on how he became the Doctor. I don’t need to see this, Moffat didn’t need to see this, and I took a dump in the last minute of this speech as the episode ended. Sure, that last part wasn’t professional at all, but this episode doesn’t deserve anything professional from me anyway.
Just to let you guys know, before I saw this episode, I wanted to like it. The idea of making another horror story in Doctor Who was a great idea. It even looked like from the trailers that it was going to be promising. But right when I s Steven Moffat’s name on the title of this episode, I was then saying “you better not mess this up.” He did. This episode had the biggest amount of potential to be great. It had potential to have me love it! And from reading all of this, you can now understand why I hated this episode so much. It’s not scary, the tone at times can be confusing, and time traveling from one part of time from another, showing that everyone is somehow connected, using Clara as the reason for why everyone was the way they were was cheap and lazy. The writing in all of these characters was terrible and confusing as well. I couldn’t like Danny, I couldn’t like Clara, I couldn’t like Rupert, I didn’t care too much for Orson, and even though the Doctor in this episode wasn’t the worst, he did raise too many questions on his motives that he sometimes made me mad. Overall, I can picture that this episode is somehow going to be linked with a future episode. There’s going to be a reason for everything that happened in what w all just saw. He did it before with Matt Smith, so I do believe that he’s going to do the same thing with Peter Capaldi. You know what else that bothers me so much about this episode? The huge amount of praise it gets. Don’t believe me? Here are some of them!
The episode showcased Moffat’s strengths as a writer, which shine brightest when he’s working within set limits, like the single
hour timeframe of a normal episode. – TV.com
this episode is sure to rock the fan base. – Entertainment Weekly
“Listen” is the best Doctor
“Listen” is a truly wonderful episode that only makes sense once the whole thing is completed, like the best of Moffat. – The Nerdist
I still cry every time I see these kind of praise. Well, if you still like this episode, even though I can’t understand why, then go ahead and watch it. I’m not stopping you, nor do I care to. Believe me, I use to do that, and I never get anywhere by doing so. I just can’t like this episode. I do wish that Steven Moffat will someday make another good episode again that I can like and approve. I don’t know when that will be, but as long as he continues to never leave the show, he still has enough time. Only time will tell. For the next Doctor Who episode to review, I’ll find an episode that wasn’t from Steven Moffat, just to change it up a bit.
In loving memory of Wes Craven
1939-2015
Youtube clips in order from:
Seventh Doctor Titles – Doctor Who – BBC – Doctor Who
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcOkA2Xmk1valTOWSyKyp4g
Johnny Depp horror scene from a nightmare on elm street – shreakh sabten
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6U7gA32Q1ozWq63H3oq7Ywx
TFS Quotables I need an adult – OneVidReplies
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkj_dzocM67nPw8QDC3wSqA
AVGN WHY.wmv – Tazmo607
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCknNddml5oggmy854XZDjZw
Moes Tavern Prank Call Compilation – Heber Martinez
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa4WClU4d9yyllM4QgM2tpA
TFS Frieza: OH MY GOD! – RTom1994
All images belong to their respectful owners.
Darkplace – Hell Hath Fury
That’s right, we return to what I now call Re-run-a-ween month with another episode of Darkplace!
We start this episode with the hospital staff waiting in a long line to get their lunch with Liz and her new temp.
Liz pisses off the chef, and the two many cooks in the kitchen then says that the chicken will take everyone another 5 minutes to be ready. I heard that chicken is difficult to make, but it can’t take this long. It’s not THAT hard. Oh, wait-
This starts to make Liz so mad that she now starts to go Chronicle on the chef and kill him with telekinesis. By knocking him out with a ladle and huge fork with two fingers! Seriously, I have no idea what they are called. It’s that thing that chefs use to stab meat and hold them in place when they’re cutting it. But do you know what else she could have used to kill him with? A SPOON!!!
By the way people, that is going to be made as a movie. Support it now! Jeffery Combs must continue to be in movies!
This brings Dean Learner’s attention and brings both Rick and Sanchez to joke about the chicken and make such horribly fake laughs.
Thornton tells both Sanchez and Rick that they need to do a search on a mystery attacker and figure out who or what killed the chef. Liz is teamed up with Thornton, meaning that Thornton has to act rude behind Liz’ back, literally, as she breaks a light bulb with her Akira powers. But Rick doesn’t believe that him and Sanchez are enough to do their task, so he brings in the temp with them in the basement of the hospital. The trio walks around in the basement, and finds a cordless iron burning Sanchez on the face. Except it isn’t cordless, because there’s a cord carrying the iron.
This brings Rick to tell Thornton that someone is using telekinesis that is caused when someone is angry or emotional, which means that we get to see more stuff fly around on strings, and Thornton shooting plates on strings!
Now that Thornton finally figured out that Liz is behind all of this, he tells Jim, one of the employees of the hospital, to tell Rick, who is being chased by file cabinets, that Liz is attacking the hospital. But you know what? Jim is being chased by a stapler. I could show you pictures on the lunacy of these moments, but if I were to do that, then this whole page would be cluttered with nothing but pictures. I’m trying to keep them at a minimum here.
So, Rick gets the call that Liz is using her tele powers against the hospital, Sanchez is surrounded by a bunch of kitchen supplies, and the temp tries to fight back by taking off his shirt and using his tie as a head band! Just remember kids, if you are ever going to be under attack, and you have something that you can wrap around your head, do so and you will magically become as tough as John Rambo!
Rick finally finds Liz as she is floating in mid-air, with her hair raising like Akira.
Sure, you can say it was creepy looking girl in the movie, but Tetsuo had his hair up like that, so I’m just going to say that Tetsuo is using her body. As a matter in fact, who here wants to see a fight against Tetsuo and Liz in a telekinesis fight against each other? I’m down!
While Liz attacks Rick with a fire extinguisher, John the temp Rambo comes to the rescue! ……..just so he can get stabbed by a bunch of screw drivers and have Rick say NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to him for a minute and throw the fire extinguisher at Liz. Well, at least the day is saved, if you would considered an entire hospital where people died to call the day “saved.” Whatever. At least they didn’t wait an entire day to stop the forces of evil, you know, like what the Autobots did in Transformers 3. Man, that last action sequence alone was just awful.
Rick learns that the temp’s name was Clive, and he dies. Rick then cries in the most overly dramatic way possible.
The episode ends with Sanchez saying that he extracted the telekinetic powers from Liz, and then Thornton makes a joke that makes everyone do the fake laugh, but this time longer.
This episode is a lot of fun, showcasing the fun you can have by seeing the obviously bad special effects being used the right way. I do enjoy seeing comedies that exploit the horror genre and have some great comedy fun with it. This show, like the Sharknado movies, is not trying to make high art, and knows it’s audience. Well, at least Darkplace found it’s audience today. If it didn’t come out until recently, it probably wouldn’t have work today, due to how risky it would have become. Even if it came back today as a continuation, I doubt it will try to be as funny. Believe me, you don’t have to watch season 4 of Arrested Development to understand my point. I went there for one episode, and that was enough for me. I tried to find this show on Hulu, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I’m glad that I was able to find this show on Youtube, and I do encourage you all to watch it for yourself!
We started off great so far for re-run-a-ween, but sadly, I have to take down another terrible episode from a man who used to try to write great stories. I’m looking at you, Steven Moffat.
High School of the Dead – Escape from the Dead
We have all heard the question about how so many non-anime fans would question why so many anime have teenagers as the main characters. The easiest and popular answer that so many people can give is simply that it is made and geared towards the teenagers. But now I must raise everyone reading this post this question: why are a big number of anime that have teenagers as the main characters are bloody, gory, and contain the adult contend that you would find in a Michael Bay movie? I tried to find an answer to this question. I really did. Since I fail to find an answer, all I can do is criticize how much High School of the Dead continues to baffle me and every anime before and after this one continues to follow this path.
I know that there are worse anime out there than this when it comes to fan service, but the more anime that I see that anime like this has fan services on teenage characters, and that a good deal of the viewers are adults, the more I feel unclean to be an otaku. I don’t know who was responsible for starting this, and I know that its what is making anime growing as big as it is today, unfortunately, but when will it end? I still wish for the day to come that all of this will die off. Believe me, it will be the greatest day of my life when it comes, and I will not be silent about it! And for those of you who do like this, I will try to listen to every one of your cries of sorrow and pain, indicating that my dreams did come true. If you are new to my site, and can’t take the morbid jokes that I will play on my fans like these, then I’m amazed that you made it this far. But for me, this show just continues to amaze me after watching it through the second time. So far, I’m glad that there is only one season, and I’m having high hopes that season 2 will never be made. I hope that it will stay that way.
We start our second episode called “Escape from the Dead.” I don’t know who decides to name these episodes, but if all of your episodes are going to have the word “dead” or written out “of the dead,” “from the dead,” or just “the dead” in that order, then your creative thinking just sucks. You’re not being cool, you’re just being stupid and lazy. Our episode opens with both Saya and Kohta running to get out of their high school, where even the staff and teachers are all already devoured. Yeah, I’m just raising my hand right now to ask why most zombie apocalypse stories have a vast majority of people already turn into zombies within a few hours? At least in 28 Days Later, you had the virus spread quickly into the humans and act like raging animals that is caused by only one drop of blood that goes into your system. That at least makes sense. Even in Fear the Walking Dead was realistic on slow it started that the show took it’s time on how it spread. This anime, on the other hand, made it look like it spread quicker than the negative feedback for both Pixels and Fant4stic, and the zombies don’t even move fast at all. There is no reason for this epidemic to spread this quickly at all, nor is there any reason for nobody to take this long to end it. And believe me, this will only get dumber as the show goes on.
Then we cut back to Takashi and Rei on the rooftop……….and just sitting there after killing one of their friends.
Yeah, I get that Takashi said that he’s just thinking about what is going on, and that they’re probably lamenting on what just happened to their friend, including how Rei lost her boyfriend, but don’t you think that you should of try to get out of their? You got probably over a baker’s dozen of zombies who want to kill you all! LEAVE THE AREA!!! Oh, what’s this? Rei just so happens to finally think about calling her dad, who is also a police officer. WHY DIDN’T YOU DO THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Whatever, it didn’t work, because her dad couldn’t hear after they lose service. Wait, what?! Even though this show also acknowledge that there is no service and that Rei doesn’t know why there is no service (which is by far the smartest thing she has ever said in this show), how on earth did this city (which I don’t think is ever specified) lose it’s signal so quickly? Are people in this world just purposely trying to kill each other? You know what? I just think that all knowledge, intellect, and even logic just wanted to leave this world and let us all rot. Why not? It’s the only explanation that works for me. Even Saya doesn’t bother with the police and tries to take matters on her on hands by trying to leave the school safe and sound. I could say she’s the smartest character in this show, and she is, but I still have issues with her.
Saya says that she’s a grade A student. She brings up the logistics behind the situation that they are in. She knows that the police and the self defense force cannot help them out very much. So why on earth do you still give her so much fan service and overly long pink hair as if she’s a stripper? Her character design does not match with what her character is suppose to be, so why bother making her a genius?! And no, the glasses doesn’t do a thing to support her character either. If you want to say that all people or characters are incredibly smart because they wear glasses in this universe, then you might as well say that these men are the most intelligent beings in THIS universe.
Are you now starting to see why I told you to avoid Shouji Satou in the first place?! And you know what else that bothers me? She says to herself that she is with Kohta because Takashi is not around, and thinks she’s a nice person. Sarcasm or not, don’t you dare tell yourself that you’re a nice person who ACTS LIKE YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A NICE PERSON!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After that big amount of rage that I have let out, we get to an even bigger hatred of mine in this show. Shizuka Marikawa.
Not only is this character painful to watch, not only is this a really dumb blonde in the most painful way possible to have another comic relief character, not only do I just find it stupid to hear the cartoonish sound effects when her boobs jiggle, not only do I just find it stupid to hear the cartoonish sound effects when her butt jiggles, but that they got Monica Rial to do the English voice for this character. Now, I’m not going to pretend that all of her roles in her career is cinematic gold, or that I liked everything that she has done, or that I ever enjoyed watching Bulma all the time in DBZ Kai. I know that she was in Casshern Sins, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and even Deadman Wonderland, so I at least know that she has done some good in her career. Shoot, even in interviews and Q&A panels, she does seem to be a really cool gal.
Did she just did this without reading the script or knowing what the character was like? Monica, if you are reading this, and I thank you for visiting my site, and I do respect you a lot. But I just do not like this role. I am so sorry to say that this is so far my least favorite role of yours.
Not only that, but I don’t think that her acting is her fault. Oh, who am I kidding? It isn’t. I know that the writing for the English dub is the one to blame. This series’ English dub is done by Sentai Filmworks, who has done some good stuff in the past, like Appleseed and the re-releases of Gatchaman and it’s movie, but then you got this. I have no idea who was responsible for writing the dialog in this dub, or the other shows that he/she did, so I won’t get into that. But I still have issues with this dub. They make references that makes no sense. In a later episode in the show, they make a Sarah Palin reference. One, I don’t think that most high school students in Japan know who Sarah Palin is or what she does. Two, the reference is so dated that I don’t think anyone will ever know what it means in the next 10-15 years. My point is to think about what you’re going to write in your show before doing it!
After Shizuka’s jugs tries to find a way how to help one of their patients as nurses and says a stupid line about how this day feels like a movie she saw from George Romeo (*HOLDING BACK ALL ANGER*), and talks as if she’s trying to get the right recipes from a market for a meal that she’s trying to make for a Christmas feast, the most tolerable character comes into the scene. Saeko Bushujima.
Even though she’s still designed so wrongfully sexual from an artist who might as well be this generation’s new Masami Obari, she’s not as dumb, annoying, or even mean spirited as the other girls in this show. Because of this, Saeko doesn’t bother me as much. She has respect for those who either are not too bad, like the one who she kills because he was bit, or even those who are just downright terrible. Her first scene in this episode had a guy who was about to turn into a zombie, and she said that his defense for Shizuka was courageous and that she would give him a less painful death, even though she has never killed anyone before. She is honorable, strong, and very dependable. Just don’t get her near zombie kids. That’s kind of her weakness. But overall, I can see why people like her character a lot.
Saya tells Kohta to make use with a nail gun because he’s a gun expert and says it would be like in that Mel Gibson movie. Okay, if this English dub had no issue to say Mel Gibson, then why did they have Shizuka not say George Romero earlier? Whatever. This show is just too stupid to care. He crafts a sight for the nail to get a better aim with the tool, and then jumps back at Takashi and Rei getting out by using a fire hose.
Saya finds out that sound works on the zombies, but this theory doesn’t work for me. She finds out by wetting a towel and throwing it on the zombie first.
But when she throws another against the lockers, it creates a sound, and the zombie follows where the sound is coming from.
But if the zombie got hit with the towel, he would of tried to reach out for that. Talk about selective hearing. Yes, I do know that Saya said that they don’t react when someone touches them, but that still made a sound. So not even the explanation from the “genius” made sense. What did I just say earlier? That she’s the smartest character in this show? She was for that one moment. I guess her intellect decided to get away from her for being annoying crab. Oh, and Saya calls Kohta fat. After all, she is nice, and it makes sense to me. Kim Jong Il was a fluffy bunny, and Mister Rogers was the devil.
So Saeko and Shizuka still tries to make it for their mistake, Shizuka still being the stupid blonde, tripping over floor mats, and then they hear the nail gun shots and finds both Saya and Kohta. Saya whines and screams at the zombie approaching behind her. By the way, for someone who says that the zombies are attracted to sound, you really suck at staying quiet. She grabs a drill that she got with the nail gun, drills into the zombies head and kills him.
Her act of terror brings all of our characters together, she still boasts about how she’s smarter than everyone else, and she is dramatized about what just happened.
The episode ends with the gang watching a news report, but puts the angle on more fan service from Rei’s undies, and after the news reporter says that there are outbreaks, Takashi is amazed that there are outbreaks. Really? That shot from earlier didn’t bring that to your mind?
Then the cops in the background shoots the zombies, they become outmatch for no good or logical reason, the news reporter dies and didn’t try to run away, and then the end.
I’m not going to give anymore scores on my website. I just care to do that anymore. I will sum up everything in my mind by saying that this episode was just awful. The characters are just not getting any better, it still makes no sense, and the tone of this show is too serious to say that its not suppose to take anything serious. The only characters who are written out to not be taken seriously are both Shizuka and Kohta, but even they’re not all that good. Yes, even Kohta doesn’t appeal to me that much, just in case if you were wondering what I thought about him. He’s just the fat, nerdy stereotype that I thought that this world was already over with. I have 10 more episodes to go, and it will not get any better for me. I just know it, okay?
Quick Look Through Dragon Ball – Emperor Pilaf Saga
Hello, and welcome to my new installment on Some Review Site called Quick Look Through Dragon Ball! This is a new review series where I will do a review of each season of all of Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT. I will do a review of each and every Dragon Ball movie that has ever came out, both theatrical releases and non-theatrical releases. I will do a review of the specials that came out too, such as the Bardock episode that came out 4 years ago. I will do these in their respectful releases, so I’m going to try to squeeze the movies and specials in order. In case if you’re wondering why I won’t do a review of each episode instead, don’t worry about it. I will do a review of each episode on Rerunagade. I just want to do a review of each season for this segment. Plus, now that Dragon Ball just celebrated its 30 anniversary with Battle of the Gods last year, as well as a new series that is coming out sometime this year, I thought that it is fitting to do this to get ourselves familiarized with the overall series before the new show comes around. That, and there’s suppose to be another movie coming out sometime.
The show begins with Goku living on his own, isolated from the whole world, until Bulma drives her car, hitting Goku. Goku’s first impressions on her was thinking that her car was a beast, Bulma was a goblin, and that her shooting him with a gun was black magic. Goku admits that he has never seen a girl before, which should make all of the jerks in the world watching this look stumped for making fun of all of the nerds for not making any contact before.
Anyway, Goku thinks that Bulma’s name is funny to him because Bulma, in English, means bloomers. If there is something that most of you have never notice before, the names in this show have a meaning that are actually puns. Examples are: Goku means eat, Gohan means either meal or cooked rice, and some of the Saiyan’s names sound like vegetables, such as Brolly sounding like Broccoli, Vegetta sounding like vegetable, and Raditz sounding like Radish. Akira Toriyama’s strength in this franchise is humor, which is something that slowly, but surely, dissolved later on. That fact is what made, to me, the franchise weaker.
The English dub never bothered explaining how Bulma first got a dragon ball, but the Japanese dub did. Bulma said that she found one in the cellar in her house. I have no idea why Dr. Briefs kept one in there in the first place, but it was there. Bulma doesn’t explain to us what the dragon balls are, because the show had to introduce emperor Pilaf to explain what they are. Emperor Pilaf is the main villain in this saga, who is a…….blue imp-looking guy? In the spanish dub, he’s called martian, and I can see why, so I’ll call him a martian too. I don’t see the harm in calling him that anyway. This franchise later on became soaked in the sci-fi genre later on. The other reason for why I’m okay with calling him a martian is because his origins were never explained in this show. Pilaf somehow rules a kingdom in a mushroom forest, and somehow has a castle that has an airplane, laser cannons, and two other people who are dumb enough to follow him, named Shu and Mai. He gets even dumber later on in GT. Someday, you will see why. This character is so vague that I have little to no connection to even care for him. I forgotten all about him until I started doing this quick look. He’s still better than Garlic Jr. though. Pilaf’s end goal in finding these dragon balls is to, you guessed it, ruling over the world.
The other thing that I don’t understand about his moments in these episodes is that they don’t really need to be in them. Sure, they’re the bad guys in this episode, but the only thing that is important about these three is that Pilaf has one dragon ball. …just like everyone else.
All of that was covered in episode 1, and then in episode 2 we get to see how Goku identifies a women. Since Goku has never seen a girl before in his entire life, he checks to see if one individual woman is a woman by doing the most gentlemanly thing in the world. By tapping their crotches. No, really. Throughout this saga, Goku’s main first contact with some of the women is sexual harassment. Things like this makes you wonder how this was passed on TV, but keep this in mind that anime was never meant for children to begin with, which is why 4Kids banned an episode of Pokemon, where James used fake boobs.
However, Funimation’s dub team did do something about it by re-writing most of the dialog to get it passed to be televised here in the US.
Now, for the longest time in my life, when I first read the manga, I saw that Goku was 14 years old, and Bulma was two years older than him. I, for some reason, thought that it was the other way around.
Yeah, what in the world was I thinking? Since Bulma is only 16 at this time, this does make me wonder how much older Vegeta was when he married her. We also get the introduction to the sea turtle named, well, Turtle.
Goku first meets Turtle by trying to get some exercise by crushing boulders with his bare hands, and almost crushed Turtle in the process. Want to know what a sea turtle was doing in the middle of nowhere? He got lost after trying to find some mushrooms to eat and was trying to find the ocean ever since. I really don’t know how you can do that, but that does lead us into episode 3, where we get to meet Master Roshi.
When Turtle finally reached to the ocean waters, he swam into the ocean, only bringing back Master Roshi, which lead to giving Goku his flying Nimbus, a.k.a., Kinto. I know I should have brought this up earlier on, but this show is loosely based off of the old Chinese folktale Journey to the West, which talks about the monkey king, who is based on a real life monk Xaun Zang trying to receive Buddist scriptures, who later on is retold in fiction about how he fights against demons and flies on a cloud too. Most of the stuff in this show is also that too. No, wait, Goku is an alien from the planet Vegeta, which is why he has that tail to begin with, as well as his villains from other planets too. Never mind.
Master Roshi gives Goku Flying Nimbus, and it can only be ride with those who are good. According to this show, Goku is counted as good, even though he attacked and harassed Bulma. Go figure. Master Roshi gives Bulma his dragon ball by flashing him her panties that she is not wearing, only later on finding out that she was not wearing any panties. That Goku took off to check if she has a wiener. Yup.
Episode 4 gives us the introduction of Oolong, who can only transform into anything he wants for 5 minutes. Oolong was first introduced by threatening a village by kidnapping girls of all ages to live with him in his later on revealed palace, while transforming into different kinds of beasts. Both Goku and Bulma did so if they the next dragon ball that an old woman so happened to have in the village. Yeah, there wasn’t a lot worth talking about in this episode to warrant a Rerunagade review, other than it’s a must see on Oolong’s part.
Episode 5 brings us to a much better episode. Bulma loses her box of capsules in a river, meaning that she lost her house, meaning that she lost her clothes, meaning that she lost her other means of transportation. Since Oolong is unable to give her a ride as a motorcycle, because he can’t hold on too much weight, they had no choice but to walk on foot, across a desert to get to Mt. Frypan. Yamcha and Puar are first introduced as bandits, living in this house:
Yamcha first fights Goku in what I say is a really good scene. He even uses his rock, paper, scissors technique that we never get to see anymore, because his other moves, such as the Kamehameha wave, has overshadowed it. I should also mention that the guy who does the voice of Yamcha is Christopher Sabat, who did the voices for were just Yamcha, Shenron, Vegeta, Piccolo, Mr. Popo, and Korin. Oh, and he also wrote some song for a show that maybe one or two people in the world might know of that’s probably worth mentioning about:
Just by seeing Yamcha fight in this one amazes me of how he started off with a huge high, and then fell very low of being as weak as Krillin. This goes for everyone else in this series too. It just feels very weird for me to see how just about everyone in show appeared to be so much stronger than they are later on. Now, they’re just red shirts, ready to be slaughtered, while making characters, such as Goku, Gohan and Vegeta overpowered, making everyone else that you liked in the past suck at what they do. But yeah, this is worth watching. Even though the first half is okay.
Episode 6 has Yamcha and Puar trying to capture Oolong’s capsule that turns itself into a mobile home. However, Yamcha finds out by hearing Goku explain to Oolong on what the dragon balls do, making Yamcha wanna steal the dragon balls instead. Just so he can not be scared of going near girls ever again. So he can snuggle with them. And then lose that relationship against Vegeta being single. Oh, what a wonderful world! Oolong just wants to use the dragon balls to wish himself a woman. There are some shenanigans of both Puar and Oolong turning each other into Goku and Bulma,
Shu and Mai continuing to have no purpose for these episodes, Yamcha confusing for Bulma’s naked body in a blanket for dragon balls, and Bulma wearing a Playboy bunny outfit that can be seen on the front cover of the volume 1 manga:
This episode is a lot of fun to watch, and I do recommend this one for a watch.
Episode 7 starts with the English dub continuing not to explain why Mt. Frypan is on fire, so I will have to explain it here. Mt. Frypan used to be called Chilly Mountain, until a fire spirit came down and caused the whole mountain to set on fire 10 years before the events of this episode. It’s what cause the climate to change in the show too. If Al Gore became a Scientologist, This would probably be his explanation to global warming. On top of Mt. Frypan is a castle where the Ox king use to live. Yup, this episode is the introduction of both the Ox king and breasts, I mean Chi-chi. You wanna see her first appearance?
Not even in my wildest dreams can that ever happen to me. That was awesome! We also get a first look of the Ox king who looks more intimidating at first, wielding a huge axe against Goku with goggles on, but then turns into the Ox king that we’re all familiar with once he sees that he knows Master Roshi when Goku rides Flying Nimbus! His authority as a king really makes me wonder if he still is a king in DBZ and GT, because I never saw it in those shows at all. Well, to be fair, I never saw GT all the way through, in spite of how utterly boring I thought the show was, but I will get to that, unfortunately.
So, Ox king says that Master Roshi can get rid of the fire from Mt. Frypan with the Basho-fan (why couldn’t he ask him after 10 years is beyond me), and he sends Goku to bring him over, but to take Chi-chi with him since she knows where he lives. Goku finds Chi-chi, Chi-chi grabs his tail to climb on Flying Nimbus, but Goku tells her not to grab his tail because that makes him weak, which Yamcha was able to hear to defeat him. I could talk more about the continuity problems with the tail now, but I will save that for later on. But Chi-chi in this one first appears as shy, and adorable. I love seeing this side of her so much. Even how she feels so touched when Goku tapped on her crotched to identify her gender. Just. Simply. Creepy. But hey, at least their first date was romantic!
Those were the days!
Episode 8 has Master Roshi travel to Mt. Frypan instead of handing the Basho-fan to both Goku and Chi-chi, because he threw it away after spilling soup on it. I’m really, really, 100% sure that the fan will never come back in the show ever again! Yup, I’m positive about that. Since Master Roshi can’t fly on Flying Nimbus, he summons Baby Gamera!
What? You don’t remember Baby Gamera? Don’t worry about it. The show doesn’t either. Master Roshi arrives at Mt. Frypan, and then takes the fire out with the greatest technique of them all:
Master Roshi’s Kamehameha wave accidentally destroyed both the mountain and the castle, and Goku tries the Kamehameha for himself. He manages to do it. He just wishes it was bigger. In the English dub, Chi-chi asks if Goku will ever think about her again. The Japanese version has Chi-chi ask Goku if he will marry her when they see each other again. It does happen. How did that turn out?
Yeah, I can believe that.
Episode 9 gives us a pretty strange story, which may sound like a massive understatement, considering what this is like and what it contains. Goku, Bulma, and Oolong stops at a small town with people who are dressed up like Middle Easterners. Even their accents sounds Middle Eastern too. I’m struggling to understand if this is ethnically sensitive or not. Everyone is scared of Bulma for dressing up as a bunny, but then it’s revealed that there is a gang that bosses everyone in town called the Rabbit Gang, who are dressed up in Nazi like uniforms, wears black bunny ears, and kicks women and children. At the same time!
And their boss comes into the scene in the most epic, mind-blowing, terrifying entry in history!
A BUNNY CAR!!!!!!!!!!!!! You may be wondering how anyone can drive such a thing and be terrifying at the same time. This guy,
ARE YOU SERIOUS!!??!?! You couldn’t have made him any more adorable, and those sunglasses doesn’t help your image either. But his ability does. Anyone who touches him turns into a carrot. It’s a lot like Majin Buu’s ability, but only with a touch. I wonder. If this rabbit were to encounter Frieza, Cell, or even Majin Buu, would they automatically lose in front of this guy by touching him? Well, Goku does save the day by grabbing Bulma as a carrot,
and then launches them to the moon with the power pole to make marshmallow rabbits. That’s so insane that you should watch this. It’s an entertaining episode, and I love it!
Episode 10 brings us to Goku, Puer, Yamcha, Oolong and Bulma into Pilaf’s castle, where all, but one of their dragon balls get stolen. This finally brings Yamcha, the man who has been afraid of women for the longest time, teaming up with Bulma. The five of them go inside of Pilaf’s castle, going through bats that Pilaf have inside of his entrance for some reason, and then they go through booby traps like in Indiana Jones. There’s even a part where they get trapped inside of a room, where the episode ends. This episode was fine, but we got 3 more to go.
If you thought that episode 9 some craziness, episode 11 puts that a step further. Pilaf exposes sleeping gas inside of the room that our heroes are trapped in, and tries, but sleeps when trying to get the dragon ball. Shu and Mai gets Pilaf and the dragon ball out, but forgets to close the room that the five heroes were in. From there on until they go back in the room, crazy hijinks happens. You get to see Bulma doing this on TV,
Goku and his friends falls in a giant pinball machine, and Goku and friends get chased by a giant pinball inside of Pilaf’s castle. You have to see this to believe it. It’s crazy in its unique ways, and I love it!
Episode 12 is Shenron’s introduction as Pilaf summons the eternal dragon from the dragon balls. Goku shot a kamehameha beam through a wall in the last episode that was small enough for both Oolong and Puar to fly through. Right when Pilaf finally gets his chance to make his wish, he wastes time by hesitating. Even the dragon gets impatient about this to the point that I can understand why he’s able to put up with the same people who finds and summons him. Because of this, Oolong had enough time to make his wish for panties, and Goku was able to make a Kamehameha big enough to make a bigger hole to get out of. Once that wish was granted, the seven dragon balls scattered all around the world, and makes Pilaf mad! So mad, that when he sees Goku, Bulma and Yamcha escaped he says, and I’m not when I say this “EXTERMINATE!!! EXTERMINATE!!!” I had no clue that Toriyama was a Whovian. Small world we live in. They eventually get caught after being chased by a pack of Mr. Burns’ hounds, and puts them inside of a prison cell that was made for people to burn to death with a sealing window that the sun can shine through. This brings Goku to talk about the giant monster that crushed his grandpa in a full moon night, that he ends up looking at. Which brings us to the last episode of the saga.
Episode 13 has Goku in his Donkey Kong form destroying most of Pilaf’s castle, and everyone else trying to escape from Goku’s destruction. Pilaf, Mai, and Shu do managed to escape on their airplane, but ended up trying to attack Goku, just to get attacked. The rest try to escape, but Yamcha tries to fight Goku’s ape form, and ends up telling Puar to turn into a giant pair of scissors to cut off Goku’s tail. Yamcha and Bulma agreed to not tell Goku about his transformation and sticks with it. Because of that, Goku sees the destroyed Pilaf castle and wants to be trained by Master Roshi to be stronger than he already is. That, and both Bulma and Yamcha become boyfriend and girlfriend until Vegeta comes into Bulma’s life.
The Emperor Pilaf Saga is a pretty good start for Dragon Ball. There are some dry spells here and there when it comes to the pacing, but you will manage to get use to it after a while. Every one of these characters are enjoyable, and Goku was, and is, a great character to watch. As for everyone else, they pretty much had their good humble beginnings, but unfortunately became useless afterwards. Here, you don’t have to worry about that. If you’re the type of person who likes to start from the beginning, this will definitely work for you. If you just want to get into the show and keep up to date with everyone else, I say that you can start with Dragon Ball Z Kai. It’s still in it’s earlier episodes of the series, but you can still start off right here too.
Join me next time as we get to see the introduction of Krillin, Launch, the first Dragon Ball movie, and the very first Worlds Martial Arts Tournament in the franchise!
Doctor Who – Season 8 Review
Now, I know my standards on how I discuss this show have been both positive and negative, but I don’t want anyone to think that I’m trying to get some closure out of it. For all I know, I just got over 100 views, which is a really good start for me in my first year of Some Review Site! I just want to say to you all that I am very thankful for all of you who do come and read some of my reviews. However, even though I get some of my writing influences from a few people on That Guy With the Glasses site, as well as SF Debris, I try not to fully become a clone of those guys. Yes, they are negative with so many of their reviews, but the thing you need to remember is that what they are doing is a shtick that they are good at doing, which is pointing out the badness of their material that they are reviewing. Not only that, but bringing up what doesn’t work in a show/movie/video game just doesn’t work when you don’t act all angry and judgmental. From there, you can come up with any joke that can make fun of the bad and stupidity that you see in front of your eyes. That’s what makes someone like the NC and the AVGN funny. As much as those people have that kind of side to stick with, I try to be neutral of both.
Season 8 of Doctor Who (season 32, IF you want to be technical), is kind of the same thing. It’s both good and not good. Not good, because this season could have been a whole lot worse. This season introduced to the world the new 12th Doctor, Peter Capaldi, the return of the clockwork robots from The Girl in the Fireplace, and the newest incarnation of the Master. It ran from August 23 of this year to November 8, with 12 episodes. I already wrote about my first thoughts about the 12th Doctor, but I can officially say that he might be my new favorite Doctor. He is charismatic, eccentric, energenic for his age to the point he can carry the show by himself, and has a great balance of how comedic and serious he should be. He acts as if he was always the Doctor from when the show began, as if he found every flaw and strong point of the character, learned from them, and became this great mold of the Doctor. As much as I mentioned how much I love David Tennant, and as much as I love Patrick Troughton, I believe Capaldi should take the throne as my favorite. I’ll give him some more time for me to confirm that.
Capaldi’s first episode starts off in Deep Breath, which turns out to be okay. The TARDIS lands in Victoria London, teaming up with Vastra, Jenny and Strax. I don’t like Vastra, I don’t like Jenny, but Strax on the other hand…. I like Strax. Yes, I can understand why some people don’t like him, but he can still give a smile on my face. It contains the clockwork robots from Girl in the Fireplace as the main monsters, and a T-Rex in a size that doesn’t make any sense. Plus, you do get to see the Doctor dressing up as a hobo, trying to figure out why he has a Scottish accent (even though he already had one as 7), being more aggressive as 6, and killing a half-man, half-robot in the end. Again, this episode is okay. There are some unnecessary things in it, the story was nothing to write home about, and both Jenny and Vastra are still intolerable for me. However, there are enough for me to give it as, well, watchable. This season has three categories: good, bad, and okay.
This one was good. It was written by both Steven Moffat and returning writer of The Waters of Mars, Phil Ford. This episode revisits (I’m saying this, because it has been attempted before in Evil of the Daleks and Dalek) on the idea on what if a Dalek can be good. It features the Doctor rescuing a soldier, Journey Blue, who leads him into the military station that is in an asteroid. She asked the Doctor for their assistance to help the Dalek because their last doctor died. The Doctor, for some reason, brings Clara with him inside of the Dalek. I say some reason, because I think this episode can do fine without her. They go inside, because they believe that this Dalek is good enough to be healed, and they have to heal it from the inside. I’m not going to give away what happens in the end of the episode, but I will say that the way how the Doctor tries to make the Dalek become good was just great to me. However, the end to what the Doctor did with Journey kind of upset me. If you haven’t seen the episode, then you will understand why. If you have seen it, then you might understand what I mean.
This episode was written by long time writer of the show, Mark Gatiss. In this episode, the Doctor takes Clare to wherever she wants to go in the past, and she chooses to meet Robin Hood. The Doctor denies the existence of Robin Hood and his merry men, just because he doesn’t believe he ever existed. The Doctor actually succeeds into doing so, revealing the movies and stories that are based off of him. Newsflash Gatiss, Robin Hood did exist:
http://www.history.com/topics/british-history/robin-hood
The only reason for why we THINK he didn’t exist is through the many different interpretations of Robin Hood. This can pretty much be compared with the popularity of Black Beard of how Hollywood made him look like he was just a character out of fantasy. The main monsters in this episode are the robots who have such a great design that it is probably the best thing about this episode, outside of the moments that both the Doctor and Robin Hood had.
I know that I’m making this episode sound decent, but it really turns out to be forgettable. The robots are trying to harvest enough gold to power up their ship. Yeah, I don’t think you this, but this isn’t Minecraft, where gold can help as an acceptable conductor. I’m sure that copper could work much better. Just saying. Plus, the villain in this episode is also forgettable too, and I don’t recommend this to anyone. However, it is harmless. The next one is not.
This episode explores the concept of what if when we’re speaking to ourselves, we’re not really speaking to ourselves? What if somewhere in our lives, we are actually communicating with someone or something? This concept is so great, that it should work! But no. That idea alone was tossed away after the first third of the episode was over. It wasn’t even handled very well either. This episode features more of a character I should of mentioned on my paragraph of Into the Dalek, Danny Pink.
I’m not alone whenever I say that he holds no interest for me to care for him, which is why I forgot to mention him earlier. You explore his past as a child, which did not work for me, mainly because Clara was the one who encouraged him to become a soldier and change his name from Rupert to Danny. The monster in this one was a massive letdown for me, and was ignored after it was “introduced”.
I put that in quotes, just because we didn’t get to see it (which I’m okay with), but we know nothing about it, other than it just stands there under the bed sheets by doing nothing, and goes away by the victim not looking at it. Not gonna lie, that’s pretty stupid. The other moments with Clara and Pink in their date was uncomfortable, and seeing Danny’s future descendant wasn’t needed. That could have been anyone else, if you ask me. Plus, the ending was pretty unnecessary too. I’m not going to say, but if you do see it, you will understand what I mean. That, and I am going to review Listen with an iron fist and crush the hearts of those who for some reason love this episode. They love it more than the episode that came after.
Time Heist is more of my cup of tea. This episode was another Steven Moffat episode, but with the help of Steve Thompson. Steve Thompson has been a writer for the show with nothing, but disappointments, such as Curse of the Black Spot and Journey to the Center of the TARDIS. It took him 3 seasons, and he has finally made a good episode. Just not by himself. The plot of this is very simple to understand. A mysterious silhouette of a man gathered Clara, the Doctor, and two other people to join forces to be part of a bank heist that later on becomes into a time heist. The other two are Psi, a humanoid, and Saibra, a shape shifting mutant. One of the biggest complaints about this episode is that Psi and Saibra don’t have that much of a character to them. What do I think about that? Personally, I don’t care at all. They’re not going to be seen again, nor do I see any reason for them to return. Another complaint is that this episode is a rip-off of Ocean’s 11. Never seen either version (but I might one day for this site), so I can’t comment on that. The other is that this bank is on a planet that is near a sun that causes solar flares from time to time, causing all running electricity, and…….yeah. That is very stupid. It is suppose to be the biggest and secured bank in the universe, and they built it there. The main monster in this is the teller, which is a monster that is very terrifying.
Basically, it kills anyone by killing your brain. The only way how you can get away from it is by not thinking. Just thinking about that alone is a really horrifying thing to fight against. I even dare say its more scary than the Weeping Angels.
The villain in this episode is not half bad. She has a good secret that I won’t reveal, and I won’t reveal the ending either. Check it out for yourself.
This is another one that I thought was okay for me. The Doctor takes on the role of a caretaker (janitor, for those of you who live in the US) in the same school that his granddaughter use to go to, Coal Hill, and tries to find a robot that is capable of destroying Earth in a single explosion. This does make me wonder if the robot has either a force field, teleportation, or if it’s a suicide bomber. Whatever, its a robot.
Now, I would say that this design is great, but the bottom half just makes this robot look so stupid, to me, that is.
The Doctor reveals that he is disgusted at Danny Pink going from a soldier to being a teacher. Some people think this is a reference to Mawdryn Unead, where when the Doctor first meets the Brigadier in 1982, displeased that he is retired from his duty. This all could of worked just fine for me, and I do accept it. I thought that whole bit was well thought out. IF I did not know that the first montage of the episode is where the Doctor briefly mentions that he hates soldiers. As much as I so far love Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, this really rubs me the wrong way. Doctors 2-5, 7 were great friends with the Brigadier, the 9th Doctor gained some help from UNIT to fight off some stupid snot farting alien race, and both the 10th and 11th Doctor called the Ice Warriors a proud, warrior race. But beyond that, its still hard to care for Danny, as we still don’t know enough to be invested in his character, and as for Courtney, I don’t think she’s a bad character in this one. She didn’t bother me as much as she did for other people. I didn’t care for her on the moon, though. And speaking of which,
Kill the Moon should sound like a great episode. This title alone should make this episode to be great! But no. This episode is just bad and uninteresting. It has space spiders that doesn’t do anything for the story, a space team of three that only two of them are there as red shirts, an astronaut who works for NASA who DOES NOT HAVE AN AMERICAN ACCENT, and Courtney, just to build up the fact that she will become a US president around 2048. Plus, it is revealed that the moon is an egg, and they almost killed it with nuclear bombs, putting in an abortion issue in the UK, where there is no debate on the subject whatsoever. Most of this was kind of boring, the subject of abortion didn’t need to be there, and Courtney was useless. This episode also contains a moment where the Doctor leaves Clara, Courtney, and the non-American astronaut on the moon to die, and then leads the Doctor to show them all a corn-ball resolution at the end. That made Clara so mad, that she gives probably her best performance in this show, revealing that she never wants to travel with him ever again. But then she appears in the next episode.
Before I get into how great this episode is, I just want to clear out of the way that Clara in this one ruins the only good moment in Kill the Moon. I don’t blame the writer for this episode, though. I can accept that he saw how Kill the Moon ended, and thought that he had no choice, but to add in an explanation as to why she was still in this. Outside of that, this episode was great! The mummy on this episode picks people to kill in 66 seconds, but I won’t tell you how, which will result in me spoiling the twist to this episode. Nobody else, but the selected one is able to see it. Not only that, but this mummy loogs great.
The performances in this episode are great, especially for John Sessions as Gus, the AI of the Orient Express. Well, we can only assume that it was an AI doing the voice. We never get to see if there is a man speaking or not. The song in the beginning of this episode is a jazz version of “Don’t Stop Me Now”, being sung by Foxes.
I personally would have thought it could have been better if she was singing this:
But that’s just me.
Both this and mummy are both written by Jamie Mathieson. So far, this guy is on a role, because this episode is just as great, if not, better than the last. In this episode, the aliens in this episode have taken the dimensions of the TARDIS to shrink the exterior.
This idea was kind of done in the opposite way in The Time Meddler, where the Doctor messed with a timelord’s TARDIS by making the interior as small as it is on the outside.
Clara plays as the role of the Doctor for an episode to investigate where the missing people gone off to, only to figure out that the aliens are hiding in the walls in the second dimension. They suck up people and turn them into paintings, just so they can try to replicate a 3-D body. This idea is so good, that Mathieson is on a role to being a returning writer for this show. A lot of people sees this as the closest to Classic Who, and I can see it. This is definitely a must see and I’m really looking forward to seeing more from Jamie Mathieson.
This episode starts with a girl entering into the TARDIS, somehow knowing who the Doctor is, telling him that a forest has overcome the world, even the ocean waters too, and somehow have the whole population of London disappear.
This girl went out and about on her own from Clara and Danny’s class field trip, making these two the worst school teachers of Coal Hill. This makes Susan feel greatful that the show never started at this time and hour. Anyway, the whole episode revolves around the girl being lost, Clara and Danny’s students being either boring or aggressive in some scenes, and making you wonder how a tiger got loose from the London Zoo. It is later on found out that the little girl was chosen to be possessed by an alien being that says that it is trying to save the world from a solar flare, while the many governments of the world are trying to get rid of them all. I could question as to why they couldn’t take over an adult to warn people about this, but this episode was already stupid right when it started. And to further prove that, they believed and accepted this from a girl, which is hard for me to believe that they did as they were told within a second. This episode has a huge reputation right now for being absolutely horrid, and rightly so. The people who think that are not wrong.
Dark Water is the first two part episode since the one with the dopplegangers. This is half-good and half-bad. First of all, the good parts. But beware:
Danny dies in the start of this episode (this is not the good part), and Clara tries to take all of the spare TARDIS keys to threaten the Doctor in a volcano, I think that’s what that place is. I could have been Mount Doom.
She throws all of the TARDIS keys in the lava until she gets her way by having him save Danny from his death. However, it was revealed that the Doctor tricked Clara by making her pass out before she did it to the Doctor. I’m glad that scene was all a dream, or I would of continued to complain why the Doctor couldn’t just snap his finger to open the TARDIS, or try to get the spare key on top of the TARDIS.
Plus, I love how the Matrix returned back into the show. I even love how the dark water worked too, which only reveals organic matter. Even though it shows the stone chairs in the tombs.
Chris Addison plays as Seb in this one, who is kind of a guide or a mentor in the Matrix for those who recently died. His role is great, and I wanted to see more of him.
Now, what’s bad about this episode? Well, everything else. I already knew that the Cybermen were going to be in this episode, only because the commercial for this episode pulled a Bad Wolf, revealing who the monsters are going to be.
Plus, I don’t like Missy all that much either.
Her incarnation is leaning towards the John Simms, who even my brother agrees with me when he said that his Master made the Doctor looked stupid. He was a clown, couldn’t take the role seriously, and he is pretty much, not a step down from the YANA Master (my personal favorite, by the way), but a huge drop in a bottomless pit away from the YANA Master. However, I’m glad that she is not as equally bad as John Simms. She’s the closest to him, though.
The only reason for why I’m mentioning her until now is because I did not care for her from the very start. I knew nothing about her to care, even for the total of 1:36 of her camera time (yes, I timed all of her on screen moments). Not only that, but there was never any reason for this whole season to build up her character or for this two parter either. If you get rid of all of her scenes or anything about the Promise Land (the Matrix), then you wouldn’t miss a thing. Not only that, but I already knew that Missy was the Master all along. Missy is short for Mistress, which is a feminine pronoun for Master. She’s dressed upperclass, because the timelords are all upperclass. I will admit that is a one-up for her incarnation compared to John Simms. Not only that, but Sylvestor McCoy already mentioned that the Master was going to be in this episode too.
As for the Master regenerating into a woman, this is nothing new. After Sylvestor McCoy announced that he was going to leave the show, one of the ideas for a replacement was to regenerate the Doctor into a woman before they were going to stick with Richard Griffiths, IF the show never got cancelled. In 1998, Steven Moffat wrote the comic relief special Curse of Fatal Death, where he wrote that the regenerated so many times until he became a woman, played by Joanna Lumley. This was probably the start of Moffat wanting this idea to happen, you can tell that he is nuts about this idea. He even tried to cast Catherine Zeta Jones as the 11th Doctor, which could have finally made the Nostalgia Critic watch the show.
Since that didn’t work, he even tried to cast Lara Pulver as 12. However, this was most of the audience’s reaction:
Since no one wanted that, I can only assume that he applied that idea on the Master.
The other thing that I should add about this before I forget is the controversial 3 words in this episode. “Don’t cremate me!” I’m not going to go into full detail about this moment, mainly because this has been complained to death about how offended some people were by this line. I’m with the majority who thought this was inappropriate and tasteless, even for a show that had the Doctor doing this:
If you want to fully understand why this moment was controversial to many, I suggest that you watch MrTARDISreview’s video about this scene. He has posted more about this topic than necessary on his Facebook page without any choice, and I feel very sorry for him to do this.
There was no suspense to be found in this episode. If there is only one word that can best describe Dark Water, it would be predictable.
This…….was a mess. UNIT takes both the Master and the Doctor away, and puts the Master into custody. The Master unleashes a black fart cloud all over the world that only rains over the graves and corpses. The reason for this is that when it rains on the dead, it works like Cybermen pollen, turning the corpses into Cybermen,
Are they trying to tell me that the Cybermen’s armor is now organic too? And for that matter, why just dead people? Why not rain on those who are alive? You could of conquered the entire Earth that way. And after they were assimilated, the Cybermen wandered around like zombies for some reason. You could say that they needed a human mind to take control of the Cybermen, but they never had this problem in the past. In The Pandorica Opens, a human skull fell right out of the Cyberman’s head, and it was functioning. That alone proves that they don’t act like wandering zombies with dead bodies. I’m only using a recent episode with the Cybermen, only because I assume that there are more New Who fans reading this who are not familiar with with Old Who yet.
Missy still acts a little bit stupid in this one, and there is a scene where she does this:
Danny was assimilated as a Cyberman (surprise, surprise), has control over his mind and body (somehow), and saves the day. How? Missy was giving the Doctor the chance to lead the Cybermen as his own army, and he does. Just to give it to Danny to lead them all to blow up in a fiery death to incinerate the black fart cloud. Missy, what did you think was going to happen?! Anyway, Missy either gets beamed out, or she gets killed by a Cyberman. You wanna know who this Cyberman is? Are you sure? It’s the Brigadier! No really, it’s him. That, to me, is both insulting and shameless, not just to the character, but also to Nicholas Courtney. That man was a legend to the show, and this is how you try to bring the Brigadier back Steven Moffat? No! I’m not buying it! This is something that I know Russell T. Davies would never do. At least he brought him back in the Sarah Jane Adventures.
Clara decides to leave the show, meaning that the Doctor will get a new companion.
Season 8 was half-good and half-bad. Fortunately, there were a little more good and alright episodes than bad. Peter Capaldi is so far a fantastic Doctor! This man alone can handle any situation on his own, proving what the rest of the incarnations didn’t have since Jon Pertwee, who was also well capable enough to do the same. As for a new companion, I prefer an 80s punk rocker with a mowhawk, or a metal head to join with the Doctor. Not only that, but it should be an alien too.
Best of season 8:
- Into the Dalek
- Time Heist
- Mummy on the Orient Express
- Flatline
Worst of season 8:
- Listen
- Kill the Moon
- In the Forest of the Night
- Death in Heaven
The Simpsons – Treehouse of Horror II
I’m going to conclude my rerunagade Halloween month with a Simpsons episode, for two reasons:
- I had to watch something that can relieve me from the horrible High School of the Dead.
- I wanted to review a Simpsons episode for Rerunagade Reviews.
I can go into detail into what I think about The Simpsons of today on whether or not if the show is terrible enough that it should of left years ago. I will choose not to, only because I’m going to save that topic for some other time. My main point for today’s review is only going to be on this episode, Treehouse of Horror II. This episode is not my favorite Treehouse of Horror episode, and I will save that for some other time.
We begin with Marge warning about how graphic and violent this Treehouse of Horror episode (which it isn’t, by the way), and gives up, since she knows that nobody will accept or listen to her this time, just like before. They did this up until season 7, right up until it got redundant to the point that nobody would ever listen to them. Then we cut into our intro!
Yeah, this is at a time where the writers and show runners were trying to find out how they’re going to do their Treehouse of Horror episodes. That, and the horror credits that they came up with, as well as the comedic tombstones in the graveyard scenes were easy at first for the writers, until they ran out of new ideas for names and jokes for them both. Kind of like how the show has turned out to be nowadays.
We get to see Homer being threaten by Jimbo and Kerny over for candy and getting his house egged afterwards, and then Bart and Lisa comes back home w candy. Homer joins in with kids eating candy, and Marge tells them that they were going to get nightmares for eating so much of it. I bought this as a kid, and now I’m trying to figure out how that works. Anyway, they all go to bed and start having their own nightmares
Okay, whenever I’m going to do a review of each and every Treehouse of Horror episode, I will split them into their very own topics. But don’t worry, they won’t be split into their own posts. In case if you don’t fully understand what I’m talking about, just read along with what I’m going to do.
The first story is Lisa’s, where the Simpsons are in a market place in Morocco, where Homer buys a monkey’s paw from a creepy seller, with a huge eye sticking out of his left eye socket.
After their tour around Morocco, they go back home on an airplane, until Homer is stopped by the airport security for stealing, and then pays $2.
According to the show runner, Mike Greece, this was a reference to Midnight Express. Yes, I know what that movie is and the significance of this scene and that movie, but I don’t why it’s in this episode. But you know what, this episode has a ton of movie references coming up. The one we’re looking at most of this story is a parody to Monkey’s Paw.
Bart and Lisa argue about wishing with the monkey’s paw for either being rich and famous, or world peace. I’ll lead you to figure out who wants what. Maggie makes her first wish, and we get to see a high class, fancy-shmancy car drive up, only to give her a high class, fancy-shmancy pacifier. And then the car drives away. The second wish was rich and fame that Bart wishes, and everyone feels great about it. Even for Lisa, who was against it.
What’s funny about the monkey’s paw is that they tried to get the fingers come down until the middle finger is the only one up. They even tried to ask Fox if they can do it by censoring it, but it couldn’t happen. That was until the Simpsons Movie. There were other moments in the show that they wanted to get away with things that could be censored, but I don’t think it was possible during this time. Which is funny to me, because The Animaniacs was able to get away with a lot of stuff in the past.
So, with the family being rich and famous, they go out in fancy restaurants, get record deals, which they now have an album on the Simpson’s Christmas Boggie,
being on T-shirts, on billboards about Mammograms, and everyone really hates it! This whole montage was suppose to be a self-satire of how The Simpsons started to get into the mainstream culture, with two albums that came out at the time, T-shirts, Bart Simpson dolls, and a billboard that Fox had with Bart saying whatever catchphrase that goes with their slogan. Each and everyday! I have no idea how they were able to keep that up.
The Simpsons starts to not like this at all, and Lisa finally wishes for world peace. This means that the whole world finally get along with each other, getting rid of weapons from all over the world, which leads to both Kotos and Kang to invade the world. This episode made Fox wonder if bringing in Kotos and Kang for this episode was going to be a Halloween tradition, since they were also in the last Treehouse of Horror. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Now that Kotos and Kang have turned everyone into slaves, Homer thinks about the best, bullet-proof idea he can come up with. A turkey sandwich! He thinks that the turkey is a little dry, and he tries to get rid of the monkey’s paw. Lousy Flanders sees Homer throwing the monkey’s paw, but then receives it, with Homer thinking that he will get crapped upon. But Ned wishes for a way to get rid of the aliens, and it works! ……with Moe using a nail on a board.
So, the day is saved, Flanders gets praised by many, and the end for this part.
Bart’s nightmare begins as a parody from the Twilight Zone movie, which is based off of a Twilight Zone episode, which might be a future review of mine, where everyone should think of happy thoughts, or they will be cursed and something bad will happen to them. Bart is living the life, where nobody should say anything negative about him, having the life of a god. In other words, he’s Kim Jong Un. And now, for the only joke that was not censored by Fox in this episode:
The only one who rebels against Bart is Homer, and he gets turnedinto a Jack-in-a-box.
Marge takes both Homer and Bart to a shrink by none other than Dr. Marvin Monroe, a character that the show killed off because the guy who did his voice wasn’t able to do it anymore for being too hard, but then came back for a cameo about a decade later. Monroe says that this all because Bart and Homer couldn’t get along, and says that they should both have some quality time together. This later on turned the relationship between the two as from less hating and strangling to, well, being almost like buddies. Doing this, for me, kind of sucks the fun and humor out of the characters.
Through their quality time, we do get to see a montage of them going to a baseball game. fishing, going to church, shooting beer cans, riding on roller coasters, all for parodying an anti-smoking commercial with a knock-off song from the commercial. This resulted Bart to turning Homer back to normal, loving him, and that made him wake up in terror. This brought Bart and Lisa to Marge and Homer’s bed out of how frighten they were, and think that sleeping with them would make things better.
Before I go any further, these wrap around scenes that you see before each segment begins were a thing for these specials. The reason for why you don’t see them anymore is because they didn’t have the time to do it with the commercials. I do wish we can see them again someday.
The third and last segment of this episode is Homer’s nightmare, where Mr. Burns is getting so sick of seeing Homer sleeping on the job. His only decision is to fire him, and he did just that. As for a replacement for the safety inspector, Mr. Burns takes Smithers into his laboratory, showing off his robot. However, the robot is only missing one thing to make it work. A human brain! So this means that both Burns and Smithers go Frankenstein on Homer, who is now working as a grave digger, sleeping on the job. Burns takes Homer into his lab, puts his brain into the robot, and then……the robot goes after the donuts. …….and he goes back to sleep.
Mr. Burns is just sad that his creation as turned into a disappointment, and Smithers says that they should just put his brain back in Homer’s head. After doing that, Mr. Burns kicks the robot, and that made the robot fall and crush him but his head. Mr. Burns asks Smithers to get some things to help keep him alive, woke Homer up, and sees Mr. Burns’ head sown onto Homer’s body.
And then the episode ends with a next tine scene that never happened.
This is one of my favorite Treehouse of Horror episodes in the show. Even though most of them are shorter than the average length of the current segements of today, they still hold up as being funny to watch. I didn’t go into too much detail with the last segment, but that was only because its the best, and I want you to watch it yourself. Believe me, if you haven’t watched this yet (I really wonder why), you won’t be disappointed. Believe me, these segments are more horror related than the recent Treehouse of Horror episodes have become.
7/10
That’s it for Rerunagade’s Halloween! See what I did there? I came up with a very generic title for this month. Man, I Am so lazy on this.
High School of the Dead – Spring of the Dead
That’s right ladies and gentlemen, we started this month strong! We had the great and crazy mind of Garth Marenghi for the start of this month, then we had the once great Steven Moffat show us Blink, and now we are sinking almost as low as High School USA! in the month of Halloween. High School of the Dead. Both terrible shows that were animated, have an MA rating, and have the same two words in their titles. The only difference is that the title High School USA! makes sense. This show, on the other hand, has a high school in the first two episodes, and that’s it. If you could of think and try harder for a better title, then I wouldn’t have tried to complain about it.
This show is based off of the manga from the author Daisuke Satou, who is the author of another manga called Imperial Guards.
I’ve only read the first chapter, and it’s not as provocative as this show that I’m about to review. That manga contains a giant Siberian tiger eating soldiers in a war series! You should check it out.
The other guy who I’m telling you to avoid is Shouji Satou, the artist who is well known for being a hentai artist, aka, porn. His famous masterpiece is FIRE FIRE FIRE.
Plus, we even got Tetsuro Araki of all people to direct this anime. What did he direct, you ask?
So, let’s get this straight. We got Daisuke Satou as the author and Tetsuro Araki as the director. Both of these people are very talented at what they do, and a hentai artist did the artwork for High School of the Dead. Let me tell ya, there aren’t enough onions in the world that can help me cry over this subject.
We start off with a foreshadow of the main character, Takashi, monologing about how the world came to an end, and we do see some zombies come in split seconds, and I must say, that was pretty effective. It works, showing how scary this show might be and–oh, we’re interrupted by our main characters of the show. Well, two out of the three in this scene, by the way. They run to the highest point of the rooftop of their high school, and we’re given the first two fan services of the show, with breast physics that is only possible if the second main character of this scene, Rei, goes around without a bra, and a shot with her panties as she falls on the ground after being whacked by her own stick that a zombie grabs. Then Rei almost gets eaten by a zombie before her about-to-die boyfriend helps save her. Okay, there is a confusion that I just noticed in this scene alone with Rei. Right before she almost gets eaten by the zombie, she smacked a zombie without any hesitation. Fine, but when falls on the ground, she still has her spear (yeah, sorry for not clarifying what her weapon is), but can’t move and is terrified for her life. But why? She clearly has the advantage of killing this one zombie.
Can someone tell me if she is suppose to be a damsel in distress or not? Because it is so obvious that she isn’t! And we haven’t gone 2 minutes into this episode at this point! Takashi looks at the zombies who are coming towards them on the roof, and yells out “WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!” That sentence was so loud that it woke up the theme song, which the song itself is great! I just can’t say the same thing about the opening.
And before I go any further, I just want to say that this anime is not as revealing as what Bennett the Sage would normally review for Anime Abandon. If this anime would have been reviewed by him, it would look tamed compared to a majority of the anime that he has reviewed, such as Junk Boy, Mad Bull 34, Apocalypse Zero or Angel Blade. My reason for saying that is because, even though there is a LOT of clevage to be found in High School of the Dead, it shows no nudity at all! My point is that this anime’s portrayal of thin tidy-whiteys and probably no bras is just makes this show too stupid than it already is.
The title shows up, being called Spring of the Dead. In case if you’re wondering, this show’s titles have “of the Dead” in 11/12 of their episodes, from what I can remember, showing how lazy the writing in this anime is. Takeshi sadly stands on a staircase outside one of the school buildings, thinking about the pinky promise that both him and Rei made about getting married, and then breaking it for going out with another guy for reasons that may never be answered. Takeshi is then interrupted by a pink-haired, glasses-wearing, screw-all-breast-physics girl named Takegi, who makes me wonder how in the world she even has any friends in the first place. All she ever does is just nags and talks as if everyone in the world is worthless. That last part at least makes sense, since her parents are filthy rich. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that she is a genius too, making everyone look and feel stupid, hating stupid people. But she leaves, thinking he’s just stupid, and Takeshi sees a zombie in the front gates of the school, trying to get in.
- How did this zombie get to this school unnoticed?
- Where did this zombie come from?
- Where are the rest zombies at? Shouldn’t there be a horde of zombies around that zombie? I refuse to believe that this one zombie got away unnoticed, and nobody did anything about it.
Oh, and even the principal, or a teacher, or somebody in staff–oh, who cares? She even has boobs flopping around and then gets bit. And you know what? Not one of the adults in this scene does a thing about it!
This gets Takeshi freaked out as he storms inside of the school to warn everyone else. Or, he tries to take Rei out of the school and leave everyone else to die. Given how confident the staff are within this situation, I’m sure everyone else would be safe on their own. Rei refuses, as she doesn’t believe him when she says that zombies are eating people, and nobody else believes him either. This makes Takeshi so mad, that he slaps her on the face!
And that probably got both Rei and her boyfriend to team up with him. I don’t know. We don’t have any explanation as to why they team up with Takeshi. He didn’t even started explaining what happened outside until they started running in the hallways. Takeshi breaks off a broomstick from the broom itself, showing me that the spear that Rei was not using a spear, proving me wrong!
Rei tries to call the police, but everyone in the police department is on hold, and then the voice on the intercom tells everyone not to freak, until he dies. We even get to see some people who I doubt will even be characters within the rest of the show. Then everyone starts to freak out and rushes out like it’s Black Friday, beating people up, and kicking girls down the stairs, still showing their butts. Rei encounters one of the teachers who became a zombie, and for some reason, when the zombie grabs Rei, the show literally thought it was a good idea to have a second of her crotch, then her butt for three seconds, showing her undies. You have to be so mind-numbingly pedophilic to go that low in animation. But then the show wants to try its best for forgive the audience by having Rei kill the zombie. Yeah, you don’t just make your character do something good after cowardly showing her panties into full detail while being attacked by a zombie. I don’t work like that. But the show remembers that zombies do not die when they get stabbed in the chest, and then we get to see more exposure of her butt and see her boobs bounce like balloons as she falls down for her boyfriend to save her. …..just so he can be bitten by the zombie. …..after twisting it’s head like in The Exorcist.
So, after finally killing the zombie for about 1 1/2 minutes of of trying to kill the zombie and inappropriately showing fan service, they finally go to the roof of the high school, just so they can put an end to this episode. They go on the roof, and sees the rest of their town is in chaos.
How in the world do these zombies manage to cause so many fires?! What did they do to create all of those fires? Zombies do not create fire on their own. I would find this believable if they were the zombines from Half-Life 2.
Either that, or the Japanese military are just as clumsy as the US military in 1998 Godzilla movie. At least that would have been believable. After all, the zombies in this show moves in a snails pace, which is nothing compared to the fast moving zombies in 28 Days Later, which came out 8 years before this, and was much better in comparison. That, and the way how the infection in that movie spread was more believable than this show, along with other zombie stories that follow this same formula.
So, they see American Black Hawks flying over them,
and they don’t understand why they’re there. Spoilers, some people in the world think the American government are the cause of all of this, and the show never explains how. Takeshi says that this is nothing like in any video game or movie, but they clearly use the same logic and tactics as what we all have seen in video games and movies. Avoid getting bitten, killing them on the heads and no where else on their bodies. You know, not like in any video game or movie.
After going through the foreshadowing from the first 2 minutes of the episode, we get to see Hisashi turn into a zombie, BEFORE ADMITTING THAT IT IS LIKE IN A VIDEO GAME AND A MOVIE!!!!!!!! Hisashi asks Takeshi to kill him before he turns, and he does so, but only if the show allows the delay to be over. This 2 1/2 minute delay contains Rei crying how Hisashi shouldn’t die and that he can’t die, crying over his corps, and playing a song that I swear sounds like a carbon copy of that one scene in 28 Days Later in the mansion, where the zombies come in and eats the 9th Doctor for me!
If you have ever seen this episode before, compare that moment with the song I posted, because I fail to find it. But if you haven’t seen this episode, don’t Avoid it like the plague! This episode is bad. Really, really bad. You want to know something else? It gets worse from here on. But this episode is bad enough. As a main character, Takeshi is terrible. He’s agressive and mean spirited, as well as being physically abusive in this episode, and when he’s not any of that, he’s kind of boring for being the lead action character. Rei’s role in this is both confusing to figure out if she’s a damsel in distress or not, as well as being the show’s biggest fan service. I remember a couple of years ago in an anime club that I use to go to, we saw this in our first day. I remember one woman said “is that even necessary” when looking at the fan service, and another one on the right of me did a counting game and found over 40 fan services in this episode alone! That should tell you the effort and thought that went into making this show. Yes, I will review and destroy this show with an iron fist later on. As for now, I will no longer go with 5 out of 5s anymore, because this episode has made me want to raise that bar for me.
1/10
Will I review something terrible to conclude this month? Maybe.
Doctor Who – Blink
I continue this month of Halloween with what is consider to be in Doctor Who the most viewed episode in the show’s history. Blink! But before I go any further, I believe I should point out how I feel about Steven Moffat as the writer of the show. When I first saw Doctor Who, it was after season 5 ended. I did see just about every episode before season 6 began, and some of the best stories that I saw at the time were from Steven Moffat. Season 5 was truly the strongest point for the show in the New Who series, and a lot of people had high hopes for Moffat, and so did I. I was really looking forward for season 6! But when I first saw The Impossible Astronaut, I didn’t feel excited about it, and the same can be said about his other episodes in season 6. But then I felt very worried about the man after he wrote The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe, which was very boring, and I haven’t seen it since it’s broadcast. And then, *sigh*, season 7 started with Asylum of the Daleks. I only had one good thing to say about it, and it was just the plot twist. The rest was offensive to me. That was the point where I gave up on Steven Moffat.
Fortunately, I get to talk about one of Steven Moffat’s best episodes!
Blink is one of those episodes that every Whovian from the new series loves to talk about. After the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, Doctor Who Magazine did a survey, and ended up ranking Blink as the second best episode in the show’s history, with Day of the Doctor being number one.
http://www.doctorwhomagazine.com/the-top-10-doctor-who-stories-of-all-time/
Sure, some of you may see that as an over exaggeration, but knowing that a massive amount of fans who rated Blink as second best in the show reveals it’s reputation. SF Debris once said that this is his kid’s favorite David Tennant episode, because they think the Weeping Angels are the best thing in the show for how terrifying they are. Even I have one of them on their shirts.
My brother’s fiance does have a shirt that says the same thing, but instead it’s this:
The reason for why she prefers this shirt over mine is because she too is scared of the Weeping Angels, and that is a great sign to show how great they work in Doctor Who!
The other thing that I remember one of my friends telling me about this episode is that Blink was suppose to be a 9th Doctor’s story, and Sally Sparrow, the main character of this episode, was suppose to be the Doctor’s new companion at the time, and as a hippie! Probably like Jo Grant. All I know is that I wish that had happened, so we can scrap the scum of the show, which was Rose Tyler. Plus, this would have been the first Doctor Lite story (which is where the Doctor is in an episode for an incredibly short amount of time for filming reasons) to have ever been aired, and it would have probably have shown Russell T. Davies how to do Love and Monsters the right way. And no, I won’t review Love and Monsters, only because the episode has been reviewed and criticized to the point that I have nothing new to add. Nash, Diamanda Hagan, SF Debris, Last Angry Geek, and the Blockbuster Buster have shared all of their pain and anguish about that episode, individually!
We open to Sally Sparrow, played by Carey Mulligan, who first starred in Pride and Prejudice, and is now well recognized in Drive. She goes inside of an abandon house at night, and takes pictures in the dark, because when you take pictures in the dark, it truly means high quality! Well, to be fair, for a rainy night in an abandon house, it is brightly lit to take pictures. I guess that makes sense. Sally walks into a room with wall paper coming off of the wall-
and she sees writing behind the wallpaper, telling her about the Weeping Angels, not to blink, and to duck!
Then Sally tears up a little more to reveal that the Doctor wrote and warned her about the weeping angels. …..from 1969. And then the title shows.
So, after the title goes away, Sally goes to her friend’s flat, Kathy Nightingale, and finds a room filled with screens with the Doctor in it, which I should go into detail on what I think about David Tennant. He, as the Doctor, was my first experience on watching the show, and loving so much about him! I think he’s brilliant, and I know I’m very bias about this, even during this modern age with everyone calling him the best, and I do think he’s my personal best too. Yes, I did watch classic Who, and I’m still in the process of trying to watch all of them. Plus, I just started listening to the audio dramas too!
Anyway, the screens are just recordings of the Doctor, but they’re not Kathy’s screens. They’re her brother’s, Larry, who lives with her, and walks around the house butt naked.
Now, even though I would say that Steven Moffat should know better than writing that Larry walks around the house butt naked, because there are children watching Doctor Who, but he doesn’t show him naked, nor does he glorify it. At least he writes Kathy hating him for acting like a slob. Sally wakes Kathy at 1AM in the morning to go out in the abandon house to figure out what happened. Or, maybe it wasn’t 1AM, because in the next scene, it’s daylight outside. Or……did they just sat in Kathy’s flat, sipping on coffee, and wait until Larry puts on his pants to leave in 6 in the morning? Whatever. I’ve seen time work worse in Transformers 2.
Sally and Kathy enters into the house and Sally says that the only reason for why she in this house was because she likes things that are sad, and those sad things makes her happy. I really wonder how that works? If sad things makes you happy, then does happy things make you sad? Do both Cheerful bear and Grumpy bear have to fight to the death to make sense out of this, or is this just some kind of emo thing that I don’t know about? In case if your brain didn’t fry by thinking about that too much, Sally takes Kathy into the room with the hidden message behind the wallpaper, and also pointed outside of the window that the weeping angel moved further away from where it once was. But then someone rings the doorbell, and Sally answers it, and allows Kathy to stay on guard, in case of incidences. Even that sounds too childish for a kid to accept. Sally opens the door to find a guy who just looks awfully weird to me. I mean, just look at the guy.
I….. he just looks so distracting to me.
And just to keep the guy’s face away from me, Kathy thinks she hears something from the distance, but only sees a weeping angel outside, and makes a different face as she walks away. ….and then the weeping angel gets closer….. ……..and then reaches it’s hand towards her…. and then *THUMP* OH, WHAT IN THE WORLD, MAN!?!??!?!!!! I THINK THE WEEPING ANGEL JUST STOMPED ON KATHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No, this is just one of the four abilities that the weeping angels have. The other two were revealed in the Matt Smith era. I just love how after Sally yells out Kathy’s name, and this guy is like “yes, Kathy.” as if he didn’t hear the loud sound that just took place seconds ago. Yeah, the guy happens to be Kathy’s grandson, and this ability of the weeping angel sends anyone back into a period of time in the past, usually more than a century, and in a different location. This time, Kathy was sent in Holt in 1920. She wrote a letter for Sally that the weird looking guy was suppose to deliver. Obviously, Sally doesn’t believe it, but what do you expect from a guy who has the looks of a child who got lost in a train station? Sally runs upstairs to find Kathy, and she sees one of the weeping angels carrying the TARDIS key and grabs it.
The letter contains pictures of Kathy and her life from the 1920s-80s, and how good her life was. She even wrote about how her husband was the first man she first met when she appeared in 1920. ….who didn’t noticed that she just appeared there in Holt. ……and followed her where she went. Yeah, that was just as stalker-ish as in The Doctor, the Widow, and Wardrobe. Kathy tells Sally to tell her brother Larry to come up with a fake story about what happened to her in a DVD store that he works in. She sees a TV with both the Doctor and Martha in it. Martha was, well, boring to me. I don’t have that much to say about her, which sums up her character to me, but I think Clara Oswald might take that place. Sally looks at the TV screen as Larry walks away, and the DVD just plays on it’s own. Then she sees the Doctor speaking, almost as if the Doctor is speaking to Sally, even after it looks like he responded to her. Larry explains that this part of David Tennant is from one of the 17 easter eggs that were found in 17 different DVDs, and they are all unrelated. Larry hands Sally the list of the 17 DVDs as she walks out of the store to the police station to try and get some help, while the weeping angels follow her. Just by a blink of an eye, they disappear.
Sally does get some help from someone who is called Detective, Inspector Billy Shipton. Well, Sally calls him that. She also forgot policeman officer. Shipton knows about the house where she came from, and was able to bring the TARDIS to the police station. Shipton tries to take Sally for a drink, but she only gives him her phone number. However, the weeping angels got him and the TARDIS and puts him back in 1969. Man, why did it have to be the black guy? In 1969, the Doctor and Martha finds Shipton with a Timey-Wimey Detector. How does it detect the Timey-Wimey things in time?
No, really. That’s how it lets you know about the Timey-Wimey. The Doctor hires him to hide the 17 easter eggs, ad tells Sally this on his death bed in 2007. It’s a deep and emotional scene, and I’m only going to allow you watch this scene on your own to see how great this moment is, from the cinematography to the direction. Sally is told by Shipton that the DVDs are hers and she has to use the 17 DVDs that Larry has. Larry tags along to help her and goes into the abandoned house to put a stop to the weeping angels! They use a portable DVD player to play all 17 DVDs in one disc, and takes instructions from the Doctor. The clever thing about this scene is how this DVD was made like you are actually talking to the Doctor himself. It’s almost as if they’re talking to him through Skype as the DVD actually responds to every word both Larry and Sally say. If you ever watch the DVD scenes itself, its almost like watching a first person view of those without Garfield comic strips that you see on the internet.
Larry writes down what Sally is saying, but I don’t know. It looks like, like this:
Who knows? Mayabe Larry will come up with an alphabet like this in the future. The Doctor says that the weeping angels are assassins who can only move when they’re not seen, and their perfect defense is that they are quantum locked, meaning that they don’t exist when they’re being seen and they freeze into rock when you look at them.
This is the kind of thing that makes the weeping angels great, and it made Steven Moffat well known for what he has done in Doctor Who too. Steven Moffat loved this idea so much of not doing things to not get killed by anyone that he liked using it.
Again,
and again,
and again,
and again.
As the Doctor tells Sally and Larry not to blink and sees the weeping angels coming close to them, they try to run down into the basement to get into the TARDIS. Larry tries to defend her by staring right in the eyes of a weeping angel. At least I assume he is, because that could have lead into a retcon in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone. Both Sally and Larry successfully find the TARDIS that is guarded by more weeping angels, who tries to turn off the lights so they won’t see the angels try to move towards them. They both manage to enter into the TARDIS and triggers the emergency protocals of the Doctor as a hologram.
The hologram says to put in a disc that for some reason shines as bright as the sun,
and inserts the disc that makes the TARDIS dematerialize both Sally and Larry out the TARDIS. The weeping angels were grabbing the TARDIS, trying to destroy it, but when the TARDIS went away, it tricked all four of the angels to stare at each other, just so they can never move again. One year has pass, and Sally sees the Doctor running down the street with Martha. Sally was going to mail the information that the Doctor needed to know about the 17 DVDs, but seeing the Doctor from a time period before this episode helps a lot better for her to deliver. And the episode ends with the Doctor explaining the dangers of the weeping angels and warns us not to blink when we see them, or any other statue that is in a figure of a human being, which will soon become ridiculous in New York City.
I always enjoy looking back at Steven Moffat’s stories in his earlier years of the show, remembering how his success got started. This is one of them. Blink still holds up as a classic horror story for me, and seeing how the weeping angels are one of the most terrifying things in the show makes them a perfect Halloween monster. I have no problem showing this episode to those who want to see an example of why this show can give children nightmares, and neither should you. It does have a number of problems, not making this one perfect. But this episode didn’t need to do that, and unfortunately, I can see that Moffat has laid in that idea for too long. To me, that is.
My overall score:
4/5
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