Forum - View topicSpring and Chaos
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Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
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Just saw it, and I can't recommend it. It's a formulaicly noble biopic, following the conventions of the form; anyone who's seen a biopic by Ken Russell will find the structure familiar. The character's philosophy comes across well in his monologues and in cleverly animated juxtipositions of his stories and the sights that inspire him, but the dialogues with his family are right out of the biopic playbook. I know you can only fit so much into an hour, but so much interesting stuff is glossed over, turning Kenji into a bland biopic saint. Furthermore the CGI sequences don't blend well with the traditionally styled animation to my eyes, and the visual design is inconsistent throughout the film.
The dub isn't as bad as I'd been led to expect, but isn't as good as the typically naive review on ANN would have you believe either. The lead actor seems to have talent and a good sense of the character, but the performance is a bit one-note. Perhaps with stronger direction he might have found more colors in it, but the whole production sounds like a gaggle of talented amateurs with insufficient direction. It's a throwback to the early days of anime dubbing, and there's really no excuse for that. In the wake of dubs like FLCL we have every right to expect better. And the visual transfer is the worst I've ever seen outside of bootlegs and porn. Go get Night on the Galactic Railroad instead; it's a lovely film with a more substantial take on Kenji Miyazawa's philosophy and art. Edited for confusing typos. Last edited by Aaron White on Mon Dec 23, 2002 12:25 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
 Posts: 3791 Location: Montreal |
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Hum... Spring and Chaos, ANN review #30.
Just from the number you can tell that this is one of the early reviews, written back when ANN still used static pages for reviews and later imported into the current database-driven system. We don't even know who wrote it or when he/she wrote it. Those old reviews really annoy me sometimes. They tend to be too positive, too short, written by people who decided to submit a review because they liked the anime which obviously results in a biased viewpoint. It's annoying because it reflects badly on the ensemble of the ANN reviews, when in fact the reviews written in the past year have been much more critical (and in my opinion more useful) |
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Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
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Ah! I was a bit harsh and sweeping in my comment on ANN's reviews; I think they're a mixed bag, but I'd say the same of salon.com's movie reviews, which I read regularly. So no offense meant to any particular reviewers.
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10455 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Actually,
I wrote that review. And no offense taken.
But FLCL was dubbed in 2002. Spring and Chaos was dubbed in... 1998 (the review was written in 2000), so judging it "in the wake of FLCL" is somewhat misdirected, no? The North American Anime industry has changed quite significantly in those 4 years. |
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jmays
ANN Associate Editor
 Posts: 1390 Location: St. Louis, MO |
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Speaking of newer reviews...
Would it be possible to add a column with the review date on the review index page? |
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