One Piece (S1) and Fate: The Winx Saga

Live action shows from cartoons I never watched!

One Piece (Netflix live action - Season 1)

Dreaming to be the one to find the "One Piece" and become the pirate king, Luffy sets sail to form a crew, find a ship, and make the world better with his abundant optimism!? Yeah, he doesn't want to be the "normal" type of pirate and it helps that he ate a magical fruit that makes him like rubber which is both cool and ridiculous. This show has very good production values, decent acting and fight choreography and a pretty amazing story so far. Also amazing is the music which features themes for all the main characters, and versions that blend said themes together! Highly recommended and hoping season 2 continues this trend.

Fate: The Winx Saga (2 Seasons)

Faries are real, look like regular people and apparently also have to go to school. Some of them even have to fight evil forces in their spare time! If that sounds a bit Harry Potterish well, it kind of is, but the protagonists here are all female and with each being a different "elemental" fairy. One can use fire, another plants, and so on and somehow can just pull powers out of their fairy asses when the plot needs them to. Apart from that the characters were entertaining enough, so if you like teen drama with a dash of magic and the occasional decent combat sequence then you might enjoy this two season show. Be advised it was cancelled though which means it doesn't tie up very nicely, and doesn't have the budget or polish of One Piece.

Decluttering Day 7: Two Roof Rolls? I think they were meant to be sun or rain shades or something that we haven't ever used.

Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku (S1) and Mashle: Magic and Muscles (S1)

Two first season anime reviews that both deal with "magic and muscles".

Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku (Season 1)

During the Edo period in Japan, a bunch of captured dangerous death-row convicts AND their equally lethal minders are sent to a mysterious island believed to be the location of the elixir of life. Whichever convict returns with it will be pardoned. This immediately sets up a battle royale type scene but its just made all the worse when the island is full of horrible monsters too (why else are they sending expendable criminals right)?

Decent art with well animated and gory fight scenes make this worth watching despite the "down time" episodes that are mostly talking. Also given the large cast it takes sometime to care about some of the characters but that fixes itself nicely once people start dying off. Fair warning though, until the announced second season comes out this won't have a satisfying ending. Still a thumbs up from me!

Mashle: Magic and Muscles (Season 1)

In a world ruled by magic users, those born without the talent for it are simply executed to keep the blood line strong. Enter Mash, who is one such "abomination" with zero magical ability (and possibly a lower IQ). What he does have however, is super athleticism and when he is forced to attend "magic school" he must come up with ways to physically achieve what the others just wave wands for.

This lighthearted comedy clearly makes fun of Harry Potteresque ideas, and it's pretty cool to see arrogant wizards put in their place through pure brute force. The jokes are a bit hit and miss though, and you'll need to power through episode one to get any traction. The art is also a step down from what I usually watch but again, its fine for what it is. Another one I'll definitely be watching the second season of. :)

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Now I want a big cat.

When the dangerous revolutionary Grindelwald (now Johnny Depp) escapes from prison, it falls to the timid Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) to recapture him, much like he does with his other magical pokemon. This second installment of Fantastic Beasts fixes many of the issues I had with the last one.

First, there are less hijinks with the creatures which is a plus as there were some really silly moments in the last movie. This leads to more appreciation to the bits that do focus on the creatures and more importantly gives people (namely Newt) more character development time (finally)!

That's a strange looking cat! I want one!

The villain is more compelling this time around and having segments at Hogwarts is a great addition to the plot. As usual, the music and effects are great which overall makes for a superior movie to its predecessor. I give it 3.5 Dumbledores out of of 5 and would watch it again.

Fantastic Beasts and where to find them

Muggles are better than wizards.

A movie set in the Harry Potter universe, Fantastic Beasts does a decent job of standing on it's own with very few active call backs to Hogwarts etc. Eddie Redmayne plays a likeable enough lead who loves his fantastic animals, and this gets him into all sorts of humorous problems.

I did find some of his lines a little hard to understand though and the female lead was quite plain (though that's probably the instruction given to her). Also watching Eddie do a pig dance midway through has kinda cringe worthy.

Party assembled!

Fortunately Dan Fogler's non-mag (aka muggle) makes everything much better and turned out to be my favorite character in the whole thing! Effects wise, it's very good seeing all the cute, scary, icky creatures (to make toys of no doubt) though for some reason I felt the stage design, especially outdoor scenes, could have used some work.

While most of the problems in the movie are actually caused by the protagonists, there is a bad guy who rates a "meh" on the "ho hum" meter. Maybe he was put in after the fact to give the movie a darker shade? Who knows. The ending bit was also a little too drawn out. Just saying.

Still I quite enjoyed this film, and give it 3 magic suitcases out of 5.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I & II)

Or Deathly boring then just Deathly. :P

Only recently did I get around to watching the final two movies of the Harry Potter storyline, and they certainly are very different beasts. If you haven't watched any of the previous movies you are going to be quite lost too, so I wouldn't start here and go backwards.

After the opening Part I is a snooze fest, due to the heavy reliance of "intrigue" in the plot and prior connection to characters introduced in earlier films. If like me, you don't remember or don't care about said characters then this is certainly not going to keep your attention. From an anime watcher stand point I'm almost inclined to say it's filler.

What the hell are we watching?

Nothing wrong with the acting or the effects, it's just really the plodding storyline that kills it. No such issue in Part II though, since they can finally focus on all the action as the forces or good and evil battle it out, already making it a much more entertaining film for me.

There's a fair bit of death happening in both movies too, but for me it's almost like the movie maker tried to keep in more to the PG side of things with many characters dying off screen - Harry just sees their bodies or hears about their demise later on. I suppose that's how it is in the books(?) but I for one would have liked to see just exactly how they died, because gore = fun.

I think the main problem though with both movies is that it's counting on you to be invested and on-side with people already, which is fine if you are. Less fine if you aren't. That's not a problem with these book-end movies per se, but it certainly means its a problem in the earlier ones.

All up, I give Deathly Hallows I 1.5 brooms out of 5 and Deathly Hallows II 3 wands out of 5. For non Potter fans who haven't yet seen them, Part II is entertaining enough but you might need to wade through Part I to get there. It really is a "play it in the background while doing something else" film.

The Internship

It might make you Google "Googliness".

When their regular sales gig falls through, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson decide to take an internship at Google to try get their lives back on track, aiming to land a job at the prestigious company (which if all was even is a 5% chance). Having the two non-techie guys totally misinterpret stuff is funny to a degree, as are some of the characters they end teaming up with. Ok, just the asian guy.

Do people really do this?

There are also cameo comedians ham up their very low brow, toilet type jokes and there's an unexpected sequence at a strip club (with nudity of course)! While the comedy was hit and miss for me, the showcasing of the company grounds (which may or may not have actually been Google) was pretty cool, as were the tasks the interns had to take on - though I probably could have done without a live action Quidditch match.

Story wise and acting wise, its an ok story with a number of funny moments. It didn't have me in stiches though and I don't want watch it again. I give it two thumbs up out of five.

Darklands: The High Sabbat

This is part of The Darklands story.

First stop is the feast preparation area where the cook is preparing some unbaptized babies for everyone to eat and asks for your help. Interestingly there's an option to baptize the kids first -then- cook them but Stubborn instead decides to do the more logical thing and just try convince everyone that eating babies is bad. Most of the crowd agrees and leaves in shame, some taking the babies with them to put into orphanages (or maybe eat them later). The cook is then disappointed that he only has regular food for the feast. No, there was no option to kill him.

Next up was the broom riding crowd where Vagabond totally convinced the them that Harry Potter was bad, so they too left in shame. Belghast tried next at the evil baptism ceremony but those guys were too hardcore in their belief which resulted in a combat that saw all the cultists dead. Jewel also did not have luck at the main altar, being unable to dismantle it before a high priest and two cronies came by, forcing the team to murderize them before anyone noticed.

Things were going well. The team even learned from a fat lady that their Great Monastery was located North West of Flensburg, a point of interest the team would have to visit later on. And then began the main event... at the main altar, a group of cultists were summoning up a demon.

Bring it on!