Monday, December 10, 2018

My Opinion on Netflix's Knights of the Zodiac



"And I raaaaan, I ran so far away. I just raaaaan I couldn't get away. I couldn't get away." I grew up in a period of time during the late 90's and mid 2000's when Western animation was was dropped for licensing Japanese Animation, cause why go threw the trouble of animating something yourself when you could just licenses it from another country. Even the few popular Western show I watched went for a more anime inspired estetic, shows like Teen Titans and Avatar the Last Airbender. Out of all these shows one of the first I watched was Knights of the Zodiac. If I'm being honest I don't really remember much of Knights of the Zodiac besides some character designs and vauge plot details. And Docrates, who's the only character who's name I remebered. No idea why.
























Years flew by and Knights of the Zodiac faded into obscurity, until a few months ago when I heard Netflix was doing a new series. I was interested but hesitant since Netflix's anime adaptations can be dicey. So when the trailer dropped a few days ago I was optimistic and after watching it I was... whelmed..

It doesn't look bad, but it doesn't look that great either. I will admit that might be my 3-D animation bias, the show does look good but something about it just seems flat. Although I will say it looks league's better then other 3-D anime's like Beserk 2017, Fist of the Blue Sky, and that show with the CGI bear that Crunchyroll keep trying to get me to watch. For some reason I was really reminded of RWBY, another Western show trying to emulate anime, while watching this trailer. All that being said I have seen good 3-D shows like Beast Wars and Green Lantern the Animated Series, and at the end of the day if the story is engaging and the characters are interesting it doesn't matter to me what it looks like.

Now speaking of characters one weird choice was that they changed the gender of the character Shun, because I guess guys can't wear Pink Armor. Now that being said I'm not personally invested in the characters from this show as much as I would be for the characters in some of the other anime I watched growing up so it doesn't really matter as much to me as it would to a diehard fan of Saint Seiya but whatever. Just thought it was weird. Also they changed Cloth to Armor cause why not, reminds me of the MCU's changing of the Infinity Gems to Infinity Stones. 

Besides that all the other character designs look like the way I remebered them. Despite the fact I may have come off as negative I'm still hopeful for this show, at the very least I'm going to give it a couple of episodes and I hope you all do too.

Thursday, October 18, 2018

Comic Panel of the Week: The Scarecrow


Recently read through the "Doctor Strange: Lord's of Fear" Trade, and finally found out what the deal with Marvel's Scarecrow is! I'm going to try to review something for Halloween but if I don't get a chance I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween!

Friday, October 12, 2018

"Golden Wind: Episode 1" First Thoughts


---SPOILER WARNING---

So after a long wait Part 5 of JoJo is finally out and to my surprise this episode actually covered alot, episode one pretty much covers chapters 1 to the beginning of chapter 6 excluding Giorno's back story from the beginning of chapter 5. Usually anime episodes adapt 2 to 3 chapters. They even added stuff like Leaky Eye Luca interrogating someone. I think the voices were good, obviously there in Japanese so of course there's something lost in translation but from what I can tell the voices match the characters.

The animation is still top notch but it seems to get better with every Part which means by Steel Ball Run the animation will look unbelievable. It looks like they put a bit more detail into everything compared to Diamond is Unbreakable, if I had to complain about one thing it's that some of the backgrounds looked like CGI but I might wrong. It was just really cool to see these scenes animated. It was awesome when we got references from other parts like Jotaro looking at a picture of the Stardust Crusaders, references to Dio, and the return of one of my favorite JoJo character's Koichi. Sadly we didn't get an opening or ending so I guess we'll have to wait until next week for that.

Like I said in my previous post about the Part 5 anime, Vento Aureo or Golden Wind as it's officially called isn't my favorite Part but maybe by re-experience it through watch this anime I'll like it more. Overall I really liked the episode and I hope this anime adaptation changes my opinion on the Part.

Saturday, September 22, 2018

My Opinion on the Joaquin Phoenix Joker Origin Movie



As a DC fan the current state of their movies has left me pretty down. Yeah I kind of liked BvS and Justice League when they came out but on additional viewings I noticed more and more problems. I'm also one of those weirdos that thought Suicide Squad wasn't as bad as everyone thinks it is and Wonder Woman was great of course. But with the recent announcements of Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill possibly leaving it got me worried about the future of these DC movies. Then they put out an image of Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker from the Joker origin movie a week or two ago and needless to say I was whelmed.



Like the earlier pictures from the upcoming Tom Hardy Venom movie, instead of showing pictures of them in character they just showed pictures of the actors that look like mug shots they attached to their resume. All in all I wasn't too excited for this movie until today when they released a teaser/make-up test showing him looking more like the Joker. And I really didn't know how to feel about it but it did peak my interest.


The make-up looks more like a traditional clown with a bit of Heath Ledger's Joker thrown in, mostly just the hair. I was thinking that this might be what he looked like before he totally became the Joker and that he was some sort of tv/carnival clown instead of being a stand up comedian like he sometimes is in the comics but from what I saw of the set photos I think that this is going to be the Joker design. Which I am actually okay with, especially after seeing the set photos. Overall I think this might be a very interesting direction to go with the movie and I just hope that It's good. Us DC fans need a win. I do have to wonder if this is going to be stand alone though or is this going to take place within the continuity of the current DC movies. It might be a bit weird to see this Joker and Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn together.