Forum - View topicREVIEW: Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 Blu-Ray
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Fletcher1991
 Posts: 514 Location: Long Island, NY |
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I bawled my eyes from this series.
Anyways, good review, I am glad this got released I had no idea. I am going to pick it up. |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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The real earthquake was off the coast of the Tohoku region, and the tsunami was the biggest contributing factor to the nuclear disaster. Why does everyone seem to forget the epicenter for TM8.0 was directly under Tokyo Bay, the worst possible place imaginable to place it? Of course you're going to wind up with pure earthquake destruction over other forms, it's enough, just like those who like to point out that the 2011 was stronger. Yeah, but again, further away and not directly under the city. Remove the tsunami and nuclear incident from the Tohoku quake and just leave it at pure earth-moving: pretty bad, but nothing they hadn't had worse. Most of the death and destruction came from the tsunami. I believe what's shown in the anime is harrowing enough. |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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There were time when I thought this series had real power like spoiler[Mirai seeing a classmate find out that her parents died or the shot in the last episodes that reveals that about 1/3 of her classmates were killed in the quake] but I really hated the climax: spoiler[I thought the ghost-brother thing was silly and the montage of cute pictures in the last episode a very bald attempt at emotional manipulation.]
Also, to too much a degree I think it's just a story about a grumpy kid who learns to appreciate life more. I thought it was kind of trite.
Another fairly serious problem. For all I know, Tokyo would take a major disaster this well...but what I do know is that this makes for a dull story. It's also somewhat inconsistent. Once Mirai encounter a woman who's been carrying a baseball bat around and is very jumpy. Where's the insecure atmosphere that's causing this woman to act like this? |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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I have noted before that Japan has an unusual dearth of disaster-type Anime. It's always an evil (or misunderstood) monster threatens to destroy the city, not a volcano erupts or an earthquake happens or the Earth's core stops spinning or an asteroid hurtles towards Earth. Japan never shows natural disasters, only those caused by someone (or something) else. I wonder if it has to due with Japan's psyche due to the trauma of World War 2.
Anyway, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0. So. It wasn't badly paced; I actually like how the first episode was used to introduce us to the characters rather than just throwing us into the fray straight away. Other parts were slow but never dull. The Tokyo Tower collapsing in top of the kids was disaster porn, but I can forgive it for that since it is pretty much the only actual flaw. The character designs were ugly - especially the frog mouths - but that's just a stylistic choice, and the designs were serviceable enough. The art was good, and the music was forgettable but alright, so I agree with Theron on those accounts. But he got it wrong with the lack of looting being a problem. Immediately after the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand there was very little looting - just isolated incidents. I'll admit, part of that was down to some extremely fortuitous co-incidences that helped keep people calm. Our navy's largest supply ship was in town that day and could provide the port with electricity (using its large on-board generators), personnel, fresh water, food and other useful supplies. Our army had been conducting huge exercises nearby alongside a visiting unit from the Singapore army, and with the Singaporeans' help rushed into Christchurch to secure the central city. There was a conference in town of foreign doctors at the time of the quake, many of whom then helped tend the injured and rescue people from buildings. And Australia very kindly sent - amongst heaps of other stuff - a military-grade field hospital and three hundred police officers to patrol the streets and help keep law and order. We also had plenty of international assistance in disaster relief; the Japanese sent seventy personnel (who then had to evacuate three weeks later when the Tohoku quake and tsunami hit), California sent a big team, and we got additional help from the United Kingdom, Taiwan, China, Singapore and others. So I'll admit, New Zealand was lucky, and we had lots of generous friends who promptly showered us with as much help as we could possibly want. But. One thing everyone noticed was how calm and friendly the residents were. The city's populace united and was in this together, and only a few absolute scumbags tried to loot, usually in an uncoordinated fashion, and virtually all of them were caught and arrested. Indeed, the real looting came in the months and years after the quake. Even now there are entire suburbs of empty houses that have yet to be torn down, and the properties in them have been viciously and repeatedly targeted by thieves and arsonists. But looting in the immediate weeks after the quake? No way. Even without the police and military presence, the overwhelming mood of the populace was to help others and to - of course - reunite with family members. The quake instantly brought the community together and - apart from whenever an aftershock hit - there was surprisingly little panic. People are not as stupid or as violent as we think they are. Back to Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, it never bothered me that people were too calm. They were clearly traumatised yet they didn't run in circles like headless chicken, and I bought that. Though the Christchurch quake happened after the show aired, it only vindicates the portrayal of the people seen in the show, especially in episode five when Mari, Mirai and Yuuki took a breather and talked to other survivors. Finally, the emotional manipulation. Look, I don't like it when stories are overtly manipulative, and I hate it even more when they're badly manipulative. But this show never struck me as trying to ram some emotions down my throat. In fact, for me, the most emotionally powerful scene in the entire show was spoiler[the old man in episode five who quietly lamented that he survived while his grandchildren died.] It wasn't an in-your-face scene at all; it just presented something incredibly moving and saddening in a very low-key, natural way. Same deal with spoiler[Mirai coming to terms with Yuuki's death;] there wasn't a Clannad-style melodrama about it at all. No manufactured drama forced at us, demanding us to feel something, just the story unfolding naturally at its own pace. |
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Zhou-BR
Posts: 1461 |
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I enjoyed this show until, you know, "that thing" happened. And it annoyed me a lot because spoiler[even though it was instantly obvious to me that Yuuki died, the show delayed the big reveal so much that it made me wonder if the director and the head writer thought viewers were dumb enough not to realize Yuuki was a hallucination or if they wanted us to suffer through Mirai's delusion for many episodes while knowing what was really going on.] Whatever they were thinking, it was a huge miscalculation in my opinion.
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walw6pK4Alo
Posts: 9322 |
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As I remember it, no one immediately knew or guessed that revelation as the show was airing. The idea did develop after a few more episodes once the pattern was noticed, but it wasn't instant. Had you known about before going in, in any capacity whatsoever? |
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SquadmemberRitsu
 Posts: 1391 |
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Wow. I never thought I'd see the day where a Sentai dub was praised. Perhaps it's the lack of a certain Mr Foster that makes the dub work.
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18454 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Yes, because every single dub Mr. Foster does is a stinker.
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KLAC
Exempt from Grammar Rules
 Posts: 1124 |
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well i just watched the dub i find very well good.
give how it story, characters, etc on it feel quite a coming of life story really wonder to do if ever happen to you. overall i find a watching worth to check. |
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2486 Location: United States |
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Technically this wasn't licensed by Sentai Filmworks. It was licensed by Maiden Japan, which also has some ADV roots, and is relatively new. I love this series. I really do. It's number four on my all time favorite anime list mostly because it's so far and away from the norm in a sea of mostly generic harems and pointless incest. I can't wait to own the DVD set and watch the dub, as I am SO begging my parents to order this for my birthday, along with Digimon Tamers and some other anime!...That, or I can try nabbing it at Anime North. |
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v1cious
 Posts: 6228 Location: Houston, TX |
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I didn't, and I caught the twist from the get-go. I mean it was a dead giveaway when spoiler[you see Mirai's breakdown in the hospital]. This was my big problem with the show. It was good, but that whole thing could've been resolved in two episodes tops. |
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Zhou-BR
Posts: 1461 |
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I watched the show every week while it was still airing in Japan, so I didn't have any beforehand knowledge about what was going to happen either. I started suspecting spoiler[Yuuki was a hallucination because his supposed recovery was too miraculous to be true, and that suspicion became certainty once I realized Mirai was the only person who talked and interacted with him.] |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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@v1cious:
You would not believe the number of people who didn't realise straight away what had happened. Sure, quite a few people instantly knew, but heaps didn't. I didn't. I knew something was up, because spoiler[the hospital scenes were cut very unusually, but Yuuki was seemingly alive after all. Mirai was talking to him and he to her. I put her crying in the hospital to simply mean that she was upset because he got hurt, which seemed logical enough at the time. It took a while for me to get suspicious - for example, he never had a conversation with Mari - and to re-examine what had happened.] It was then that it dawned on me. But by that time they'd arrived at the school and the answer was forthcoming anyway. Anyway, if you realised it straight away then congratulations. |
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Emerje
 Posts: 7410 Location: Maine |
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I watched it while it was airing and figured it out immediately. spoiler[I work in nursing so maybe that makes me a little more in-tune to this type of thing. Things were way to critical and urgent for him to just recover suddenly. This isn't some shonen action series where characters can be back in fighting form in a few hours. Plus the way people regarded her and not him with so much concern pretty much clenched it.] But the twist did nothing but piss me off. spoiler[It's a show about a quake, how hard is it to drop something on a little boy? Nope, we're going to give him some sort of unnamed deadly ailment completely unrelated to the quake. Killing him wasn't an issue, but doing it in such a random way completely ruined the series for me. Seriously, pre-death I would have given it an A, but post death it became a generous C. I was so angry at the writers for using such a cheap trick to keep the drama going that it killed my interest in the series. Since everything in the second half revolved around that awfully written death I could stay interested.] This would have been an amazing movie or short OAV series, but the writers clearly ran out of idea on how to keep the TV series going for 11 episodes. Emerje |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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^
I don't know what you're were smoking when you watched the show, but Yuuki spoiler[clearly died of a brain/head injury. He did hit his head at one point in the show - I can't recall exactly when - and that's when it happened. It was one of those head trauma injuries where the patient feels fine for a while after - hours or even days - but then suddenly takes a turn for the worst as the swelling or whatever takes hold.] So yeah, definitely not just a random thing. I know this sounds weird coming from me - someone who took ages to twig to the plot twist - but you should have paid more attention to the show. It did show us spoiler[why he died.] |
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