Hiromu Arakawa

I first stumbled upon the manga series Fullmetal Alchemist around a decade ago, and started following it. A short while after, the anime series was released, and I was hooked onto it. Till now, I still think it is one of the best anime and manga series I have ever come across.

I recently blogged about another anime that I have been watching, Gin no Saji. It was only recently that I realised that it was by the same author as Fullmetal Alchemist, Hiromu Arakawa. And I was quite amazed - these two series were entirely different in terms of genre - one on fantasy, and the other on real life. 

And it was only today that I realised that Hiromu Arakawa is a female! (Obviously I can't tell between male and female Japanese names) Interestingly, she was born and raised on a dairy farm, which explains how she was able to come out with Gin no Saji.

Gin no Saji

Gin no Saji translates to 'Silver Spoon', and it is definitely one of the best animes I have ever watched recently. To think that I almost couldn't be bothered to watch it - after all, how interesting could a kid joining an agricultural and farming school be?

I was wrong. The first episode alone captivated me, and now the anime is under my "treasured anime list" - those that I reserve for gym sessions (good animes distract me more, which is good when I am using the elliptical trainer). I can't bear to watch it at home.

Anyway, the anime is about a boy named Hachiken. Despite getting excellent grades in school, when he graduates, he opts for Yezo Agricultural High School, a boarding school with a farm. The anime doesn't explain upfront on his decision, but as the show progresses, bits and pieces of information are released, and we slowly gain more insights into Hachiken's life. 

Hachiken learns how life as a farmer is, and how studying alone is insufficient to get us through life. And since I am personally quite interested in animals, I found the anime rather intriguing; it was also a learning experience for me as I learnt about how piglets are resigned to fate shortly after birth, the sensitive nature of horses, and more importantly, how the farmers struggle with showing love and taking care of their animals, while knowing that one day they would need to kill them with their own hands.

I haven't watched such a good 'slice of life' anime in quite a long time; the others I could call to mind are Honey and Clover and Nodame Cantabile. I am at episode 8 currently.

A horse taking a liking to Hachiken's... hair and spectacles

An egg coming out of the chicken's anus cloaca

You can't get chicken that is fresher than this.

Jobs

Source: jobsmovie2013.com

Some disclaimers first - prior to watching the movie, I didn't read any movie reviews. And I have already read the autobiography on Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

Now on the movie. For one thing, I do think that Ashton Kutcher did a pretty good impersonation of Steve Jobs, especially his hunched posture and bouncy walk. And behaviours aside, his appearance does look like Steve Jobs, perhaps around 80%? The hairstyle, facial hair, clothes - all of them helped to make Kutcher look very much like the real Jobs.

If you have read the book, you would probably agree that we can sum Steve Jobs up in three aspects - the entrepreneur, the boss, and the human. The movie glossed over the first one, focused on the second one, and almost entirely skipped the third one. It thus shows a very incomplete side of the man, whom to understand better, you would need to look at the whole package.

The first part of the movie consists of fleeting scenes with little connections to each other; the average viewer would probably be a bit lost, especially if he hasn't read the autobiography. As the movie progressed, it also started to come apart - there were so many important events and conversations that were crucial to the movie, and yet were missing. Just to name a few omissions - Wozniak gave some employees his own stock before Apple's IPO to reward them for their early help (Jobs refused to acknowledge them), Jobs getting married to Laurene Powell and having three kids, how he came to terms with his illegitimate daughter Lisa, how he led Pixar to success, and so on.

Let's sum this up. To understand the movie, you would probably need to read the book first. But after reading it, you don't have to watch the movie anymore. It's a good thing the movie was only released after Steve Jobs' death. I think he would have gotten into a fit if he saw this shit and sent it back to the producer again.

Man of Steel

Henry Cavill as Superman in Man of Steel. Source: forbes.com 

Having watched quite a few Superman movies [ Superman (1978), Superman II (1981), Superman III (1983), Superman IV (1987), Superman Returns (2006) ], I had my reservations in watching this, since the last few were rather disappointing. (I even survived ten seasons of Smallville, by the way.)

My gut reaction to Henry Cavill donning Superman's cape was one of doubt. He just doesn't look like  Superman. Of course, Christopher Reeve was the best there could ever be, but at least Brandon Routh in Superman Returns still looked as if he fit the role well... never mind the plot, of course.

Brandon Routh in Superman Returns. Source: www.g4tv.com

Henry Cavill's costume has undergone a significant change from his predecessors. While everyone has been talking about the removal of his trademark red briefs, I think the bigger change is on the colours. Cavill's costume is now much darker, an indication of how the character and movie will turn out. Superman here is much more troubled and brooding than the previous Supermen, and being conflicted by his desire to help others and the need to keep his powers secret, he sets out on a journey to discover his true heritage.

The opening scene was perhaps a bit long, but nevertheless necessary to give the movie some backing (and perhaps to explain to people who are unfamiliar with Superman's background). We are then brought to some scenes of his childhood, where the movie explains how he got his powers of X-ray vision, super hearing, and heat vision. And of course, on how his parents have managed to instil a rock-solid sense of morality and ethics into their adopted son. Lois Lane then comes into the picture, and accidentally leads General Zod to Earth.

That's around half the movie gone. The other half revolves just around mindless action. The battles between the aliens with super strength involved punches which sent each other hurtling kilometres away and smashing through several buildings in succession, which reminded me very strongly of Dragonball. But despite taking so many hits, Superman didn't look the slightest bit injured. And one amusing observation was that although their battles took place in the sky (and everywhere else), they were always in firm sight of Lois Lane and the rest. The final scene was also coincidentally where Lois Lane could reach in just a few minutes... hmm.

I am not sure if there will be a sequel. But the charming relationship between Clark and Lois - that of a bumbling and clumsy Clark having a crush on the aggressive and confident Lois, who loves Superman while not knowing that Clark is actually Superman - is definitely impossible now, since the whole world seems to know who Superman is. And come on, his disguise is pathetic. Christopher Reeve and Brandon Routh are able to pull off the stunt of putting on a pair of big plastic spectacles and transforming into Clark Kent, but Henry Cavill in spectacles just looked like, well, Superman in spectacles.

Man of Steel was a good effort at rebooting the Superman franchise. But to me, Christopher Reeve will always be the true Superman.

Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3 textless poster. Source: marvel-movies.wikia.com

Iron Man 3. The worst Iron Man movie ever.

I have been a fan of Marvel since young, and out of all the heroes, Iron Man was my favourite. So I had been looking forward to all the Iron Man movies, especially the very first one.  It turned out to be fantastic. Iron Man 2 wasn't as good as the first, but the drop wasn't that drastic. Iron Man 3, I felt, was extremely disappointing. The acting was great, but the plot negated all of that.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

The show cheapened the image of the Iron Man armours considerably. There was no focus on any particular armour now; instead, the newest version is the Mark 42 (!!!), which did not seem particularly powerful either. Each armour seems so... disposable now, as they shatter and get wrecked so easily by the bad guys, whose superpowers (bestowed by an experiment called Extremis) were too conveniently powerful without much convincing explanations. Hell, considering how powerful Iron Man was in The Avengers, the army (wait, it wasn't even an army, maybe just a platoon?) of Extremis could easily defeat Loki and his cronies with little effort, from the way they scrap the Iron Man armours with ease.

The way the (empty) armours came apart so easily upon impact also seemed illogical. So why was it that if you shove a fleshy human being in, the armour becomes so much more resilient? Why, when remote-controlled by Tony Stark or JARVIS,  did they fall apart when hit by a train (I am sure he has sustained bigger impacts before in the previous movies) or worse still, when they simply flew and knocked into something stationery? The train example can be put in another way - if they got wrecked just from a train impact, it meant that if Stark was inside, he would have died instantaneously. It doesn't make sense!

And Mandarin... wait, who? The Mandarin was supposed to be a Chinese (makes sense, no? Mandarin, Chinese?) but is a freaking ang moh here. In the original story, the Mandarin ventured into the mysterious Valley of Spirits, where he discovered the millennia-old wreckage of a starship of the Makluan extraterrestrial race, and the ten mighty rings which had powered the vessel. These rings gave him power, which he used to clash with Tony Stark many more times. It is obvious that the movie's Mandarin bore entirely zero resemblance to the original Mandarin, which makes me wonder why they even used his name in the first place.

(Full details of the Mandarin can be found at the Marvel website here.)

The Iron Patriot. Yes, it is basically War Machine with a new paint job of red, blue and white. The inconsistencies with this armour alone could make my head spin.

In chronological order:

1) The armour (with Rhodes inside) got shut down when some Extremis crony simply touches his armour and heats it up. 

2) After Rhodes was forced out of it, the Mandarin could mysteriously get someone to wear that armour and fly off to visit the US President. I thought it was not working?

3) US President captured. They brilliantly chose to "imprison" him inside the armour. So suddenly, the armour could not work again. Yes, maybe they did that because they knew he had no idea how to use the armour. But if you were the terrorists, would you even gamble on that by putting your hostage in such a powerful weapon? What if he experimented and blew you off with the armour's repulsors? 

4) US President gets strung high up in the air while wearing the armour, while the Mandarin prepares to execute him publicly. Rhodes managed to save him, and tells him "I need that armour!" Which means that the armour is still functional?

To my surprise (and disgust), rottentomatoes.com gave it a rating of 93/100 as of today, based on an aggregation of 54 reviews. Am I missing something here?

The post-credits hint that there will still be an Iron Man 4. Please don't let this deteriorate any further. There isn't much room for it to go further downhill.

The Gap-Rule

Quote from episode 47 of Gintama:

"The Gap-Rule : For a man who is usually bad, one act of kindness will improve our impression of him tremendously. However, on the other hand, for a man who is usually good, one little bad thing will turn him into a villain."

How very true.

The Dark Knight Rises

Batman takes on Bane, in The Dark Knight Rises. Source: CNN

With all the hype about how good The Dark Knight Rises was, I watched it with high expectations. Significantly high expectations, actually. So I was a little disappointed after watching it, especially with all the loopholes. Here are some that I noticed, and I am pretty sure there are more that I missed out.

1) Didn't the doctor say the cartilage in Bruce Wayne's kneecap was totally gone? How did it get healed totally with just a knee brace? I would love one of those for my back.

2) Wasn't Batman out of action for eight years? How did he still manage to fight so well after that? Heck, if I hadn't exercised for just half a year, I think I would be panting ten times as hard as him after fighting some thugs...

3) Regarding Bruce Wayne's bankruptcy via fraudulent trading in put options - trading should be suspended immediately when the trading floor was stormed. A trade of that magnitude, especially after an attack, should raise a lot of warning bells and take quite a bit of time to clear.  And come on, who trades using fingerprints? I don't even think the NYSE has a biometric system for accepting trades via fingerprints! Maybe I am wrong. But on the whole, it seems like a too-convenient excuse by the director to make Bruce Wayne bankrupt. 

4) Gotham seems to be very efficient in cutting off the power to someone who didn't pay their bills in just a short while.

5) How did Bruce Wayne return to Gotham City from that hellhole (which looks like it is located at the other side of the world) in just six hours, without any resources? And he looked like he just came out from the bath - clean, dressed up, and shaven. 

6) Which brings me to my next point. How did he even get into Gotham City, considering that all the bridges were closely guarded by the police and he had nothing? No suit, no submarine, no Batpod, no Batplane, no shit...

Having said all of that, if it was still reasonably enjoyable (although it felt like the whole Inception cast migrated over to this movie). Tom Hardy's acting was really good, considering that with his nose and mouth covered, he could only express himself mainly via his eyes. And I really liked Anne Hathaway (a lot of my female friends disagreed with me, though), especially how she was riding the Batpod and uh, how she got off the bike.

The Amazing Spider Man

After watching The Amazing Spider Man, these were my first thoughts:

1) How did he sew such a kick-ass suit by himself?

2) I don't think Spider Man would be very popular with the city cleaners, with all the web that he is leaving all over the city. (And the web doesn't look easy to remove!)

3) Wasn't he shot in the leg? How did he get the bullet removed?

I should state that I wasn't specifically looking for loopholes, but these just came naturally to me (the first and third point). Overall, the movie was still quite all right, and comparable to the first movie by Tobey Maguire. The biggest question on most people's minds are "why remake Spider Man again?" so I took the liberty to do a bit of research on it.

It turned out that in 2010, Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios wanted Spider Man 4 to focus on Peter Parker back in high school. And Tobey Maguire, who was 34 at that time and married with two kids, probably thought that he would not fit in anymore and hence rejected the role. Sam Raimi, the previous director, also quit after being unable to accept the new script and financial conditions (he supposedly requested for US$300 million but was only granted US$200 million). Thus, Sony and Marvel decided to simply refresh everything - new director, new story, and new cast.

The Hunger Games

Katniss Everdeen preparing to shoot an arrow. Source: getthebigpicture.net

The idea of The Hunger Games is certainly quite sick and sadistic - pitting twenty four teenagers from the poorer districts against each other until one survivor remains, while the wealthy citizens from the capital cheer them on. The protagonist is Katniss Everdeen, who volunteers to join the games in place of her younger sister. 

The movie had rather positive reviews - 85% on Rotten Tomatoes as of 31st March 2012, so I had rather high expectations for it. True enough, I found it quite entertaining and likable, albeit being a bit low on intelligence. If you were to spend just a little effort thinking, it is easy to point out the loopholes and weakness in the plot. Spoilers ahead!

In such events, where there can only be one survivor, it is inevitable that self-survival instincts take over. Trust no one. Any alliances formed would be flimsy at best where each member would be wary of the other, not knowing when the alliance would crumble and when they would receive a knife between their shoulder blades. However, in the show, this doesn't happen. Five people form an alliance to hunt down Katniss first, because she seemed like the biggest threat. It is normal for people to band together in such a situation to get rid of the biggest foe, but the level of trust they showed each other was unbelievable. When they had her cornered up a tree, they actually slept at night. All of them, together! Firstly, if there was no one keeping watch, their prey could have slipped away easily (but Katniss was also sleeping, so whatever.). Secondly, one of them could have easily slit all the others' throats while they slept. One survivor, remember?

Things were also too convenient for Katniss. One obvious disadvantage of getting close to someone else is that you would never know when they will turn on you. Another is not knowing when you have to kill that person. All the friends that Katniss made were conveniently killed off by other players, relieving her of any possible guilt and dilemmas (and for the audience, drama.).

Near the final scene, when Peeta was being held hostage by Cato, Katniss skilfully shot an arrow at Cato's hand (which was wrapped around Peeta's chest to hold him). Common sense dictates that at such a short range, the arrow would have easily pierced through Cato's hand and injure Peeta as well, but that didn't happen. Cato's hand must be made of metal to be able to stop the arrow at its tracks like this.

In conclusion, The Hunger Games had great potential to become a dark and disturbing movie, but it seemed like the producers stepped away from that on purpose and toned it down significantly. There was lots of room to play on the audience's emotions, stirring up feelings of disgust on the sadistic nature of the show, but this wasn't done. The murder scenes were too quick and have too little blood, removing the sting of death and sympathy that the viewer may have at watching a teenager's life being snuffed out. On a related issue, the movie did not emphasise on the horror of teenagers committing murder as well. The ending was also weak, extremely weak - I would have thought that they would try and find a way to end the Games once and for all, but that didn't happen. They became the victors and went home. That's all.

Immortals

I caught Immortals today, being someone who loves Greek mythology and has read such stories since I was young. (NOTE: Spoilers below.)

Here is the synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes:

The brutal and bloodthirsty King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) and his murderous Heraklion army are rampaging across Greece in search of the long lost Bow of Epirus. With the invincible Bow, the king will be able to overthrow the Gods of Olympus and become the undisputed master of his world. With ruthless efficiency, Hyperion and his legions destroy everything in their wake, and it seems nothing will stop the evil king's mission. As village after village is obliterated, a stonemason named Theseus (Henry Cavill) vows to avenge the death of his mother in one of Hyperion's raids. When Theseus meets the Sybelline Oracle, Phaedra (Freida Pinto), her disturbing visions of the young man's future convince her that he is the key to stopping the destruction. With her help, Theseus assembles a small band of followers and embraces his destiny in a final desperate battle for the future of humanity. 

The show was a total let down. Other than the whole plot not staying true to the original Greek mythology at all (really, not at all!), it was also filled with holes and gaps that are so big that it couldn't even hold rocks.

The movie seemed to revolve around the Bow of Epirus, which is supposedly so powerful that its wielder can conquer the world and defeat Gods. In the end, King Hyperion only used it once - to destroy the gates of a fortress. After the gates fell, he had the chance to send several more arrows in (yes, ammo is unlimited) to wreak more destruction. But he didn't. Hmm. Other usages of this legendary bow were minor and hardly worth mentioning.

When the fortress was breached, the soldiers panicked and tried to flee. Theseus managed to hold them together with a speech in a lacklustre tone that was barely audible. In just a few seconds, all of them had such a huge morale boost that they were banging their shields and pumping their spears in the air. Nice. Obama could learn a thing from two from Theseus, man.

Also, this is a Greek movie, dammit. Why is the oracle so obviously Indian? She looked so out of place, and as one movie reviewer said, she has to be "the loosest virgin in the Peloponnese". Her reason for sleeping with Theseus? "I want to see the world with my own eyes." (if she loses her virginity, her oracle powers would be lost as well) Oh my god. I didn't need extra cheese to go with this.

I thought Titans are supposed to be big. Huge. Enormous. Gigantic. The movie's Titans were human sized, and the way they were imprisoned in a cage with long bars across their mouths made them perfect for table soccer.

The caged Titans, from Immortals. Table soccer, anyone? Source: Latinoreview.com

I should have checked Rotten Tomatoes first before watching (they gave it a score of 38%). When King Hyperion said, "His pain has just began", I think he was referring to some of the audience.

Captain America - The First Avenger

Source: http://www.hdwallpapers.in

I must say, I found the plot full of holes. Some examples:

1) Fighting is not just about brute strength. How did Steve Rogers learn how to fight so well without any unarmed combat or martial arts training?

2) And where the hell did he learn how to pilot a plane?

3) Why was Hydra's technology in the 1940s even more advanced than what we are using now? They have laser beams that obliterate humans totally (nothing left, not even a speck of dust), turbo cars, aircrafts...

4) It's amazing that Steve Rogers could infiltrate a heavily guarded military base easily despite not having any stealth training, and also despite carrying a frigging bright red and blue shield on his black which simply yells "SHOOT ME".

5) Despite saying that he does not like to kill people, Steve Rogers seems to show no hesitation (and no qualms) in throwing his enemies off a plane in mid air.

By the way, Chris Evans (the main actor) also played Human Torch/Johnny Storm in The Fantastic Four, which is also in the Marvel universe. Does this mean that future Marvel movies cannot involve both Captain America and the Human Torch together (unless he is in his flame mode)?

I am also very curious on how they managed to make Chris Evans look so skinny and scrawny. It's probably due to CGI - I am guessing that they used a puny actor for his pre-Super-Soldier-serum role and matched Chris Evans' head in. But it's really impressive and realistic!

As of 31st July 2011, Rotten Tomatoes gave it a certified-fresh rating of 77%. I think the most I can give it is 6/10. And this score because I am a Marvel fan.

Smallville

A very Christopher Reeve-like moment.

I finished watching the season finale of Smallville a few days ago. Looking back, I was pretty amazed that I actually managed to sit through all ten seasons of it (okay, I actually gave up by season 6, and it took me three more years to pick it up again). Many series have their own ups and downs, and Smallville undoubtedly had many more downs than ups, with a generous share of terrible moments. It was never short of lame conversations, lousy acting, and stupid plots, so it was somewhat of a miracle too that it survived ten seasons, while series like Heroes didn't make it past four. (Hell, Flashforward didn't even make it past Season 1.) Perhaps it's because I am a geek for superheroes that I managed to stick through it?

For those who have no idea what Smallville is about, it's basically about how Clark Kent grew up, learnt to control his superpowers, and finally became Superman (Smallville is where he grew up). While he learnt some of his powers quite early in this series - super strength and speed, impenetrable skin, x-ray vision, eye beams, super breath - it took a full ten seasons before he learnt how to fly, something which many people were looking forward to most of all. And because of some contractual issues, he only donned on his trademark red and blue tights on the series finale - and there was no complete view of him in the suit either (damn). Still, considering the producers' restrictions, this was handled pretty well. The finale was also full of references to the original Superman movies acted by Christopher Reeve, which most fans would be delighted with. Finally, it was a nice touch to use the original Superman theme song near the ending.

So it was with much relief that I finished the finale feeling satisfied. After investing so much time in it, I would be really pissed if the finale sucked like most of the series.