TV Review | Nerdologists https://nerdologists.com Where to jump in on board games, anime, books, and movies as a Nerd Wed, 19 Aug 2020 14:18:13 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://nerdologists.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/nerdologists-favicon.png TV Review | Nerdologists https://nerdologists.com 32 32 TelevisionTalks: Umbrella Academy Season 2 https://nerdologists.com/2020/08/televisiontalks-umbrella-academy-season-2/ https://nerdologists.com/2020/08/televisiontalks-umbrella-academy-season-2/#respond Wed, 19 Aug 2020 14:16:22 +0000 http://nerdologists.com/?p=4669 So, I’ve been sitting on this one for a little bit just to give myself more time to think about what I liked and didn’t

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So, I’ve been sitting on this one for a little bit just to give myself more time to think about what I liked and didn’t like about this season as much. But, I probably should start some what the show is about.

Umbrella Academy is based off of a comic by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba. The main premise of the show and comics are a family of super powered young adults who grew up in The Umbrella Academy. A weird household where their adoptive father trained them into a group of super heroes. But things didn’t go well for long. In season 1, their father has passed away and Vanya is starting to remember what her powers were, meanwhile, Five, one of the siblings, figured out how to time travel and eventually finds out that the apocalypse is about to happen. They have to find a way to put their differences aside so that they can stop the apocalypse. It’s a really fun season and they don’t do that well at stopping the apocalypse. In fact, Five has to jump everyone into the past and they get separated along the way. They find themselves in Dallas in the 1960’s with a number of them landing right around 1963, and Five, of course, finds out that because of something they’re going to do, the apocalypse is going to happen again, just way sooner. They have to figure out how to come together again so that they can stop the apocalypse yet again, and for some reason, their father is in Dallas as well.

Overall, I think that this season is stronger than the first season. The first season starts off quite rough with introducing all of the characters and not much happens for a few episodes. However, I think that the first season maybe had a few more highlight moments. This one tells a great story, but has less that stands out as being quite as fun as a some scenes and characters in the first season. Another way to put it is that while season two is more consistently good across the board, I don’t think there’s really anything bad about it, season one had some higher highs but a bunch of lower lows as well. I do miss Hazel and Cha-Cha though, they were a real highlight from Season One for me.

Image Source: Netflix

They did a good job of keeping the characters true to who they were in the first season. I don’t think that anyone has changed massively, though some of them who have been there longer in the past do adjust slightly. I think that Five who is kind of a wild card in season one still maintains that which makes him very lovable and such a good character. I think that Klaus actually takes a little bit of a step back in this one, he was the standout character from season one, and in this one, I think that he’s given less of a role in order to let some of the other characters shine, one in particular, but that’d be a major spoiler. I also think that they gave Diego and Luther more to work with this season, so while Klaus took a step back, you had everyone else maintain or take a step forward.

Final thing I do want to talk about quick is the music. There are some shows that get the music spot on, and this is one of those shows. Everything worked so well in season two, and you get some montages with music that you just don’t expect. And that makes it stand out even more. There are again some spoiler moments that just so work incredibly well. It makes sense that the music is good since the comics were created by Gerard Way, but I’m not sure how much he’s involved in the show. But I’m glad they kept a strong musical influence on the show and I think that they just nail it for this season.

So, is this worth checking out? You need to see season one first, and that can be a bit of a slog, especially early on. I think that if you can get through two episodes of season one it does become more consistent, and I’d say that it’s worth it. But without watching that, season two won’t make that much sense, so just be aware of that. I really enjoy the show and I think that season two is one of the better seasons of a Netflix original show, they go deep with it while still having fun. So, yes, I’d say that it’s worth checking out, just be aware that the show as a whole is a bit goofy, so while it can be serious, it tends to be more goofy than serious.

Did you like season 2 of the Umbrella Academy?

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TelevisionTalks: The Witcher https://nerdologists.com/2020/06/televisiontalks-the-witcher/ https://nerdologists.com/2020/06/televisiontalks-the-witcher/#respond Wed, 17 Jun 2020 13:15:39 +0000 http://nerdologists.com/?p=4451 Netflix has put out a lot of big shows over the years, things like Stranger Things for several years now have been grabbing the headlines,

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Netflix has put out a lot of big shows over the years, things like Stranger Things for several years now have been grabbing the headlines, that was until The Witcher came out and for a hot second that was a show that people were talking about a lot. I, however, didn’t succumb to the immediate watching hype, just because I had too many other shows to watch really, not for lack of interest, but I finally got around to watching The Witcher.

The Witcher is the story of three different characters, you have Yennefer the witch who can harness chaos to perform amazing acts of magic. You have Ciri the princess who has her own powers. And you have Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher. The show is about how they got to where they are in the present and how their stories intertwine. This is done through vignettes. For Geralt, it is about how he has to take responsibility and how while Witcher’s are monster hunters, he wants to be more than that. For Yennefer, it’s about what she’ll do for power and if it was worth it. And Ciri, it’s about staying alive.

Image Source: Netflix

I’m not going to go more into what the plot is, because, firstly, it’s a lot of vignettes that are working around the main points for the main characters and how it brings them all together. I’m also not going to do it, because it’s not a cohesive story. That’s one of my biggest knocks against the show is that for basically every character but Ciri, the vignettes jump all over the place and because of that you don’t get much payoff for the story. And even the vignettes are inconsistent. Some of them are told extremely well with a deft touch, and some of them beat you over the head with foreshadowing very obvious things. And even with the characters, Geralt’s stories are generally pretty good and they do come together with a solid payoff. Geralt is also tied to Ciri, and while her story wanders a little bit, there is more of a point to it. Yennefer, on the other hand, has her story wander a lot, and they try and make her a pretty sympathetic character, but really fail at it in my opinion.

Image Source: Netflix

The acting in the show is inconsistent as well. Henry Cavill is very enjoyable as Geralt. And there are other portrayals that work well, I think that Ciri is solid. But again, Yennefer’s acting, Anya Chalotra, is just lacking for me. And I put that more on the story than Anya’s actual skill as an actor, but she is given a story that is extremely unfocused and just ends up not having enough to work with in it. For me, a lot of acting issues can probably come down to the writing, but it was a shame because Cavill really does do a good job as Geralt and he makes the show watchable, otherwise, I don’t think anyone else would have been able to carry it.

The same for the world building in the show, it’s just inconsistent. The world itself is extremely interesting, the monsters who show up and things like that are different and really cool. But, you get bits and pieces of the world and how it works given to you generally not in the right order and not at the right speed. I don’t want an information dump, which they don’t do, but they mainly just pull things out of thin air with little to not explanation in the middle of episodes. It’s something, like the acting and the writing, that I hope they can clean up in season two. It goes too much between trying to have some Game of Thrones feel to it and epic monster hunting and back again without explaining why or how things are working.

Image Source: Netflix

And really, the same again for the effects in the show. Some of the things looked really cool. I know that the dragons weren’t the favorite for a lot of people, but I liked the design used there. But the opening scene is horrible. It’s such a bad use of green screen, Geralt feels like he’s on a sound stage maybe with the monster there, but there’s nothing else that he can interact with. The trees in the shot are horrible and static and just look so obviously fake. I think that it does get better and maybe a little more consistent throughout the show, or at least after that first scene, but it’s the first thing people see and it looks so bad.

Overall, this is a show that I generally did enjoy. I thought that once it get going, about episode four, it was interesting, because they created a more cohesive story for Geralt. But then they’d keep through Yennefer’s story in as well and that would mess things up for me. From what I’ve heard, this first season was based off of a series of short stories, and it feels like that, but that’s not a good thing, it doesn’t feel like a good episodic show, it feels, too often, like the worst part of episodic shows. There’s also the timeline piece. They are extremely subtle about it, and that’s something that they needed to be more obvious about, and then there were things that they could have and should have been subtle about because it would have been a good payoff. I’ll watch the next season when it comes out, but I’d say, if it’s just kind of interesting, probably skip it.

Did you enjoy The Witcher? Is it on the list of shows to watch for you if you haven’t seen it? Should I play any of the games/pen and paper RPG?

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TelevisionTalks: Ghost Hunt https://nerdologists.com/2018/10/televisiontalks-ghost-hunt/ https://nerdologists.com/2018/10/televisiontalks-ghost-hunt/#respond Wed, 24 Oct 2018 13:05:11 +0000 http://nerdologists.com/?p=2588 Who do you call when there is a suspected spirit haunting your school, home, or church? Shibuya Psychic Research Center SPR is the vehicle for

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Who do you call when there is a suspected spirit haunting your school, home, or church?

Shibuya Psychic Research Center

SPR is the vehicle for the characters in the anime Ghost Hunt. It really focuses around Ayoko and her powers to see into the spirit realm. However, she,  up to a few months ago, was just your average high school girl. Other than the fact that she really liked talking about ghosts and sharing ghost stories. When weird things start happening at her school she meets Kazuya Shibuya who runs the SPR. She ends up helping him and she gets hired into SPR as his assistant. She meets the rest of the cast of characters who are also looking into the paranormal and together, they end up taking on a lot of different cases.

Image Source: IMDb

This anime has a few moments where it has that harem style anime feel, but it’s interesting because it’s offset from the main character. Ayoko does seem to pull people to her in some ways, but Kazuya does more so, so the group is focused around him. However, the story is clearly focused around Ayoko. Also the surrounding characters are less stereotypes and more focused and developed characters in their own right. So while I’d normally say anything that uses that harem trope is a bit cliched, this one works and feels better developed than most.

Image Source: IMDb

One thing that I do really like about this anime is the case structure. In typical television I feel like there are two standard ways to do a show where people take on a case to solve. You either are doing the case of the week so it’s wrapped up in the 20 or 40 minutes depending on the length of the show, with an occasional two part episode at the end of a season. Or you have a big case that’s running through the whole season, and the season might only focus on that, or it might be the case where it’s the case of the week as well as story line running through the whole season. In the case of Ghost Hunt, each case takes between three and six episodes. So you’re able to get a little more meat into the plot lines and they definitely do that by creating some quite creepy stories and interesting character development. But it never feels like you’re stuck in a single story too long though, you always know the case will be coming to the end and they’ll be moving on to the next thing.

Image Source: My Anime List

Another thing that stands out to me about this anime as compared to a lot of others is that it is a true suspense/horror type of anime. It doesn’t rely on blood and guts to make itself terrifying but instead uses twisted and psychological situations as well as imagery effectively that is unsettling or off putting. That’s some of the reason that I picked the anime, one it was something different looking than the normal anime but more so, because it seemed to lean into the horror and spooky side of things.In my opinion it does that horror quite well, and while it isn’t going to give you many jump scares, the balance between normalcy and unsettling is well done, and the cases are well crafted. And this is something I want to see in more shows, but anime and live action.

Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable anime. I thought that with the characters in the show, it developed into something more than it could have been, which was pleasantly surprising. There are some definite creepy moments in the anime and how creepy they episodes might be would depend upon the case as some cases are a bit tamer or funnier, but that was done for balance in the show which could have just been dark, darker, and darkest if they hadn’t been careful. I think the uniqueness of the feel of it, the fact it did the suspense and horror well together is what will make it stick out for me. The downside is that there was only a single season of the anime. Looking on Amazon, there is clearly more manga printed for it but there was only a single season for the anime, and since the anime came out in 2006, I don’t think we’re going to get a second season.

Now, who is going to like this anime? I don’t think that this will be one for everyone. While it won’t be too spooky for most people because it is more psychological, a fair number of the cases might have things that are a bit much to handle. The more you unravel in the cases the more disturbing things you generally uncover. But it isn’t particularly horrific, it’s more that it’s unsettling.


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TelevisionTalks: Code Geass – Lelouch of the Rebellion https://nerdologists.com/2018/03/code-geass/ https://nerdologists.com/2018/03/code-geass/#respond Fri, 09 Mar 2018 19:34:26 +0000 http://nerdologists.com/?p=2197 Time to do another anime review. This one was an interesting anime in that stylistically at times it reminded me of what I’ve seen of Fullmetal

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Time to do another anime review. This one was an interesting anime in that stylistically at times it reminded me of what I’ve seen of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, though it varies greatly in most other areas. This was an anime that I almost stopped half way through, but I’m relatively glad that I didn’t. It’s a pretty dark and depressing anime without being too dark. It’s a weird balance that I’ll talk about later.

Image Source: Funimation

What Is it About?

Lelouch, in line to be Emperor of the Holy Britannian Empire, has been exiled to area 11 after his mother was killed. He went there along with his younger sister. He’s held a grudge ever since, and that’s putting it pretty lightly. He is pissed off at his father, the emperor, and is worried for his sisters safety. He’s still a highschool student but it bent on taking down his father. Things start to move faster with his plan than expected when he meets a girl, C2, that the empire was keeping hostage. She’s not normal and gives him the power of geass. This power allows him to, only once, convince someone to do what he tells them to. With that in play, he can start his plan using the rebels from Japan (which is area 11) to draw the emperor out. He soon becomes a power and a faceless mastermind known as Zero. His actions don’t always work as he plans, but with his mind for strategy, he almost always wins.

So How was it?

I liked the show quite well, but I did have some issues with it. With a power like he has, he’s clearly not going to be using it for good most of the time. That causes some issues in terms of consistent tone of the show. It’s a lot about his downward spiral into more and more difficult and destructive situations where he is not the good guy. You realize pretty early on that Lelouch is interested in the safety of his sister, but is much more interested in revenge at any cost. This makes the show very bleak at times, and while you wait for him to be redeemed, it just continues to spiral further and further down.

It’s also odd because it juxtaposes the Zero side of Lelouch versus the face he puts on for the school. There are full episodes that are just silly and goofy. There’s a clear reason for it, otherwise the show would be too heavy,  and it also sets up future consequences for Lelouch. However, it often drags out the show. I personally think they could have cut the number of episodes in half and had about the same impact. It starts to get very heavy and dragging as you know what is likely going to happen and while most episodes do have one or two really interesting moments, it could be cut down for the same impact by a lot.

Image source: Funimation

It’s not to say that it’s a bad show. For a show that is heavy, they do a solid job of never feeling like Lelouch is completely lost and can’t be redeemed, though it keeps on being harder and harder to actually believe that he could be. And the ending is a solid payoff for the series. You have a bit of an ah-ah moment about it while watching the last handful of episodes, and that is something that I always appreciate. Is the payoff in the end worth the amount of time that you’ve put into the show, probably, but like I said above, it could certainly be written tighter and would have had the same effect.

Also, subs versus dubs on this one. I watched it dubbed, so I can’t tell you how it sounded with subs, but I’d guess it would be better to watch it subbed. The voice acting wasn’t bad in Code Geass, it just isn’t great. Most likely it would be more compelling to watch in subs to get the full proper emotion.

Finally, how trope heavy is it and how much fan service is there? This is a pretty adult anime. There is nudity, Zero/Lelouch is trying to take over an empire, so there is a fair amount of violence, and while there isn’t a ton of gore, there’s enough blood and consistent violence throughout the show. So for fan service there is a fair amount, just be warned. However, I do think that Code Geass does a solid job of subverting a number of tropes, especially with Lelouch and how it ends. There would be ways to make it very tropey throughout, and it isn’t too heavy in that aspect. Also, there’s a unique element to this anime compared to most others I’ve watched that moves from heavy to light in terms of the episodes and even during some of the same episodes. It’s interesting to see how it does that, and that’s one of the things that can keep it going.

Final Thoughts

It’s a tough anime for me to really love. I think that there are plenty of solid parts to it that make it quite enjoyable, however, it just takes too long. While the end of the anime subverts a trope, you can really see the telegraphed movements up to that point, and for that reason, it should definitely be shorter, because you know what is going to happen. It would make the ah-ha moments or the what just happened moments stronger as the anime just drags and you don’t get fully wrapped up in it.

Would I recommend it? For a more serious anime fan, I would. I think that I’m at the point where I’m picking up most things that come up, but I know that I’m not catching everything that might make me appreciate it more. However, as I said above, there’s a fair amount of fan service, and there’s a lot of violence, so be warned about that if you do decide to watch it. I’d say that it’s generally worth it for the payoff, and I might right about the payoff in another article about character arcs or something along those lines later. Overall, not bad, could be better, probably worth watching.


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TelevisionTalk: Full Metal Panic! https://nerdologists.com/2018/03/full-metal-panic/ https://nerdologists.com/2018/03/full-metal-panic/#respond Thu, 01 Mar 2018 17:00:18 +0000 http://nerdologists.com/?p=2199 Hello 90s, I’ve missed you! Time to review the first season of a crazy anime that most of the time just was so 90s it

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Hello 90s, I’ve missed you!

Time to review the first season of a crazy anime that most of the time just was so 90s it hurt, literally.

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Full Metal Panic! (yes, there is an exclamation point in the title) is an absurd anime. It came out in 2002, but feels like it was made in 1995, and that is when it’s set, or thereabouts. The music, the plot, everything feels like it’s from 1995. The story is pretty absurd as well; there are people who are known as “whispered” who have knowledge trapped in their heads about amazing technologies beyond anything that could be imagined. So of course there are plenty of people who are after them and trying to unlock that knowledge. Mithril is a secretive mercenary organization that stops bad things, and is mainly focused on the drug trade, at least allegedly. They catch wind of a high school girl who is a target of these hunters who look for the whispered, and they send in a soldier to pretend that he’s a high school student to keep track of her and make sure nothing happens to her.

You can basically guess what happens from there. Sousuke, the soldier who’s sent to protect the high school girl, follows orders to the tee, and even though he’s been fighting for a long time, he’s still just a teenager. He’s put in charge of watching Kaname Chidori, a weird and fiercely independent girl who lives on her own. Since Sousuke is supposed to be on a secret mission, he has to try to follow her around without getting caught, but he takes his mission very seriously and ends up mistaking so many different things for threats. This leads to him and Kaname bumping heads, and causes many weird situations. However, when Kaname and the whole class are taken hostage by a bad guy who’s after her, Sousuke and Mithril are able to protect her, though not before her whispered memories are unlocked. Can they keep protecting her now? What’s going to happen to them? What other absurd situations will they get into? And in the most 90s way possible, will they fall in love?

This is just an odd anime. It has so many comedic moments and situations that makes it seem pretty light, but it goes to some oddly dark places at times. The main characters play off each other in many ways, the way Drax and Star-Lord do in Guardians of the Galaxy. Sousuke is very much the straight man who understands everything as a literal command, and has no idea how to interact with society or in normal situations because he’s been fighting his whole life. Kaname is a free spirit who does what she wants, and that combination is played for a laughs a lot.

It’s an anime that I would say is often less about the overarching plot, and more about the character development. How much or little does Kaname change when her whispered powers are unlocked? Will Sousuke ever be able to fit in properly and gain her trust? They do a solid job with the character development of the main two characters, and it’s interesting to see how they react to situations as time goes on. That’s what makes this anime pretty solid in my opinion.

Now, talking about gore, violence, adult situations, fanservice, and all of that fun stuff, what level is this anime for? It’s definitely a slightly more mature anime. It isn’t nearly as mature as Code Geass is, and the fanservice that there is, is always played for laughs, not sexuality. However, they are fairly often fighting various villains, and there is a fair amount of death and blood in the show. It also deals with some deep themes, especially when it comes to Sousuke and his past. It’s definitely well done in those areas, though.

Image Source: Crunchyroll

So, with that said, would it be something that I’d recommend? I’m not sure — I don’t know that it has a very broad appeal. Simply because, as I have said, it’s so 90s it hurts. If you’re a 90s kid, it’ll be pretty funny, as you’ll see the 90s-ness come through in the effects, music, and situations. Just because of those things, it keeps it pretty light; however, if you aren’t into reliving the 90s and all the questioning of why you ever thought those things were cool, this anime is probably not for you. If you weren’t around in the 90s at all, probably skip it. It’s going to feel very dated — the effects are very outdated, and everything about this anime feels like it was made in the mid-90s, not in 2002.

Talking quickly about dubs versus subs: I watched it dubbed, and I tend to watch most anime dubbed, though the one I choose depends on what a series is set at for VRV streaming. I thought the dub was just fine, and Sousuke in particular worked very well dubbed. The dub will probably be easier for an English-speaking audience to relate to. Most of the voice acting in it is just okay, and a lot of it is pretty over-the-top. However, a lot of that is intentional because it’s meant to be very absurd with the 90’s motif. I’d probably recommend the dub in general, but if you go with the sub, you probably won’t have much of a different experience.

One last thing to talk about is the bad guy for the “mission.” Overall, I felt like he was a pretty weak bad guy. He was supposed to be more scary than he was, but he just kind of fell flat. He was cruel, and that was about it; you never really felt all that threatened by him or felt he had any greater objective than to just be the bad guy. If you’ve read my article on villains, you’ll know my thoughts on that. It helps that the show is really more about Sousuke and Kaname’s character development, but it felt like it was lacking in tension a lot of the time. Because of that, it has the drama of a sitcom in the wrappings of an action show a lot of the time. That does give it an odd feeling when the bad guy is just being cruel sometimes in his killing, as it doesn’t always match the overall tone, though it isn’t really ever not 90s.

Overall, this was a 90s anime. It was fun for that reason, and hard to watch at times for the same reason. There are more “missions,” or seasons, as they really would be. I’ll likely check them out later, and you might get separate reviews for those; however, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be about the same in terms of reviews. It’s fun, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The season itself is pretty short and can be watched as a stand-alone, which is nice. So if you want to sit down to some 90s fun, I’d say check it out.


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TelevisionTalks: Dark https://nerdologists.com/2018/02/televisiontalks-dark/ https://nerdologists.com/2018/02/televisiontalks-dark/#respond Fri, 09 Feb 2018 16:11:31 +0000 http://nerdologists.com/?p=2127 I just wrapped up watching Dark, a new-to-me show on Netflix. Dark is a German show surrounding the town of Winden. It seems generally like a normal little

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I just wrapped up watching Dark, a new-to-me show on Netflix. Dark is a German show surrounding the town of Winden. It seems generally like a normal little town, with the most interesting thing being a nuclear power plant that was built in the 50s. But in the year 2019, Jonas Kahnwald’s father killed himself, and then several months later, a kid went missing from the town. Then another kid disappears, and from there, the mystery around the town and a 33-year cycle of disappearances start down an eerie path.

This show lives up to its name, being a very dark show and very atmospheric. On their own, the shots of the forest surrounding Winden and the slow pacing give the viewer a feeling of always being on edge; this is then enhanced greatly by the soundtrack. Dark is a slow burn, but in the best way possible. Everything about it aesthetically builds into this, and you connect pieces and see how 2019 ties into 1986. You get to see characters as they were growing up, and then as they are now, and you see things in a different way than you often do for a TV show. There is also an idea in this show of not really knowing who people are, so as you explore more in 1986, you start to really see how the characters in 2019 became the way that they are.

Dark is a show that needs to be watched in German with subtitles though, in my opinion, in order to get the full feeling of the show. It’s too distracting when something that takes a couple of words to say in German takes five in English, or vice versa. I can watch dubbed anime most of the time because the mouths don’t really match up with the words anyway, but in this show, with the difference between German to English being more obvious, it was too jarring. And as it is a well paced show and a slow burner, there aren’t many moments that are just rushed through — because of that, you never feel like you’re rushing through reading the subtitles and missing what is happening on the screen, so I really would recommend using the subtitles.

Dark Netflix
Image Source: IMDb

Another thing that I’ve seen as a criticism of Dark is that it doesn’t wrap up more than a couple of the mysteries very satisfyingly. I liken this to a number of Brandon Sanderson books, in which one orverarching story is split into four or five parts. There’s almost always some payoff for each part of the story, and you feel like you’ve wrapped up that part, but it doesn’t wrap up the story as a whole. Dark is very much like that as well, and the only annoying thing about that is that I really want the next part of the story to be available now. For some, this might be annoying and might make it worth waiting for the second season to come out before watching the first (apparently, 2019 is when season two will reach Netflix, though I’m hoping it will sooner). However, if you’re looking for a new show that’s intense, creepy, and eerie, I wouldn’t bother waiting, as Dark is probably the best show I know of for that.

Overall, I loved this show. It hits the right notes for me — it’s a creepy show without being focused on jump scares or anything like that. It feels intense, it draws you in, and the characters are compelling. It’s a show where all the characters feel like they are some level of grey, where they aren’t bad, but aren’t entirely good. They also aren’t just grey for the sake of being grey, because that often just makes a character feel like a bad guy; they all have specific motivations that are tough, and they genuinely believe that they are doing the right thing or are doing something out of deep and strong emotions. Dark tugs at your heartstrings and keeps you wanting to know what will happen next.

I’d recommend Dark for most people. For some people it is going to be too intense; for some it is going to be too creepy. Kristen half-watched it because she thought it would be too creepy and scary, and I think with what it deals with, it might have been too much for her in some ways. It doesn’t go overboard on the scary or creepy aspects, but it also doesn’t let up on them. So watch the trailer before you watch the show if you are someone who isn’t sure about creepy shows, because this one is dark and intense.


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Steins;Gate – Anime Review https://nerdologists.com/2017/05/steinsgate-anime-review/ https://nerdologists.com/2017/05/steinsgate-anime-review/#comments Fri, 19 May 2017 17:03:17 +0000 http://nerdologists.com/?p=1646 Back for another anime review. Kristen has her review of this anime on Twin Cities Geek, so I wanted to get mine up on here

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Back for another anime review. Kristen has her review of this anime on Twin Cities Geek, so I wanted to get mine up on here now.

Image Source: My Anime List

The highest compliment that I can probably give an anime is that it didn’t feel like an anime, it honestly feels like a very good TV show. In fact, it doesn’t even feel like it’s an animated show, now, that doesn’t mean that the artwork is so hyper-realistic that it is mistaken for real life, aka. Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One, but that the story is so complex and well thought out that it doesn’t seem like something for kids, it doesn’t seem like a typical anime, it seems like something you’d see on a TV show with regular actors. There is none of this confusion where it is more on the fun scale or so on the fantastical scale that you know it’s anime like I’ve run into a lot, even with more serious anime like Berserk.

Steins;Gate is a story that follows a mad scientist who accidentally invents time travel and the organization that is trying to stop him and his fellow lab members. That is the single sentence version of the plot. It crafts an interesting story as the time travel machine is developed, as they look to over come problems with it, as people they thought they could trust, they find out they can’t, and many more troubles as they first race to see how the machine works and then race to try and figure out how to stop some things that they unintentionally started or caused. The story is paced wonderfully and always leaves you wanting to watch more.

Image Source: Steins;Gate Wikia

Besides the fact it doesn’t feel that much like an anime, the other thing that I loved about it was the characters. The main mad scientist, Okabe (also who calls himself Hooin Kyoma – please forgive the lack of special characters in it), is a very enjoyable character to watch. He’s over the top, talks to himself, and always believes that he’s the best thing around. But it’s not a grating, I’m better than everyone else, it’s funny a lot, makes you feel for him at other times, and you see how much of it is actually him putting on a front as he’s just an eighteen year old first year college students. All of the other lab members have their own personalities as well, and there isn’t overlap. There’s Daru, who’s character is personable, but skeevy, Mayuri who is sweet and a bit spacy, and rounding out the biggest main characters, Kurisu who has smart, slow to trust, and doesn’t put up with Okabe’s crap. Even the other characters in the show have their own personalities, and everyone seems to have been thought out well. There isn’t much overlap on traits, but they all have something that sets them apart. It’s very cool to see that depth of character development worked naturally isn’t a show.

This is an anime that I would recommend to basically anyone. While Daru does make some sexual jokes (or have jokes made about his gaming dating life), there really isn’t anything offensive in this show related to sex. However, this show does deal with dark themes, there are things that happen that are tough to watch, many times very emotional. It isn’t very gory, but there are moments that do show some gore and some violence. Everything the show deals with, though, feels like a proper part of the story and I never felt that things were handled poorly in the story. It is paced so well and everything handled so well, it’s definitely worth a quick watch, which is another nice thing, it’s not too long.

Have you seen it? If so, what are your thoughts on it?


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