Zíza

I've been thinking and asking myself for a long time: "What did this movie give me?" An enjoyable movie experience? I wouldn't say so. Did I get catharsis and shed buckets of tears? No, I didn't. Did I enjoy it? I don't recall doing so... Was I in suspense? Was I eating it up? Was I visually captivated? No, no, no. I can't say it's a bad movie, but I didn't take anything away from it – no impression, no feeling, no desire to discuss it with friends. I wasn't impressed with the acting either. Sure, the film has an interesting subject, but the execution is just so dry... it didn't sit well with me. I'm not going to say it's a waste of time when I know that for some, it's sure to be a powerful cinematic experience and a walk through the valley of tears. For me, it was just killing time and where I sometimes found myself staring out the window. A better 2 stars.

Yeah it's enjoyable from the point of view that doramas in the 90s didn't suffer from the ills that doramas of later years suffer from (you could maybe call it "the bad influence of anime faces" and weird kisses). It's an enjoyable, slow-moving, occasionally boring and uninteresting yet fun dorama that has interesting characters, but of course you have to get used to them. I found them both flat and annoying at first. And on the whole – I have no idea why – I felt sorry for Takenouchi because of the character he played. But that almost immediately got settled and I was able to enjoy him. He's actually the reason I watched this dorama. A bit of stalking :-D It's not suspenseful, heartbreaking, or exciting. It's completely ordinary. And some people might like ordinary. It's got good dialogue and the relationships between people are handled and presented without unnecessary drama, which is very nice. Definitely don't be afraid to watch it and make up your own mind. Just try not to throw it away after the first two episodes. It'll spice up enough (but not enough to make you sneeze :-D). 4 Jul 2020 Edit.: I watched it again after nine years, and apparently you have to grow into a series and have something behind you in order to be able to understand the characters better. That's why I'm raising the rating and writing a review...

I didn't really like the animation here, I found it below average. The opening and ending were also mediocre, but that didn't matter. The story, the execution, the characters: all average. Nothing stuck out of the greyness, nothing took on a garish color. You watch, but you don't care. Will they win? You're told at the beginning how it's going to turn out, which for me drops any expectations. Only towards the end is anyone likely to be affected by what happens to Yuki after the last qualifying match. Otherwise, it's a severely mediocre anime that doesn't even deserve more than these 10 episodes.

Bland and flavorless, no suspense, cliché upon cliché that you can't even digest properly because the movie just won't let you, Cam Gigandet can't act, and the ending is a waste. The music didn't impress either. And I kinda regret the money I paid for it. The action was slow, and it wasn’t really any good. The vampires weren't that great, either. It's just a very, very weak film. Somehow, after sleeping it off, I can't even remember what (if anything) I enjoyed about it...

I admit without torture that shōnen-ai (or yaoi on a softer level) is my guilty pleasure. But this didn't grab me like Junjo Romantica; in fact, it just feels like a rehash and a variation on what I've already seen, with slight differences but no novelty. I recommend it to yaoi fans, after all it is about a romantic relationship between a man and a man. It's definitely relaxing for those who don't mind "homo". But the ending "messed me up". Ritsu's a fool. A weak 3 stars.

It's clear to me that if I had gone to see this movie in the theater, I would have really regretted the money I wasted. The villain was pretty weak all round (not just in "strength" but also in character, which is something you can get used to with the Naruto movies, but here...), plus you just can't help but compare him to Sasori... Another minus was the speeches: who the hell came up with such empty dialogue?! The fights: another boring affair, and that's a problem when the last one lasts half an hour (nothing new, the same thing over and over again, and it wasn't exciting at all). Add to all this that Minato didn't do much, in fact he was hardly there (and he was the one I was looking forward to most in this film), that he (and the others) seemed pretty dumb – and you can't do that, not with a badass like him! :-D And yes, even the rasengan came in and some genius gave it the stupidest name he ever could have (and it was Yellow Flash who said it, noooo). Fail. But it had its upsides. It was nice that Naruto listened without talking, there was even that thing I wanted so badly – Naruto x Minato = father x son; the resolution of that (which wasn't really addressed, but still), you'll see that flashback towards the end. It's not a movie I want to go back to, even though young Kakashi and Minato are there. That being said: this movie totally wasted its potential (and it could have been such beautiful fan service) :-D

I was thinking that this treatment definitely has an advantage over the others in that it's Japanese, short (9 episodes), and from 1996. I wasn’t wrong. But I also thought that, given the material available at the time, it would be at a disadvantage since the manga didn’t stop being published until 1999. It was a shame, but it got by without it. The big positive about this series was that not once did it make me feel as horribly embarrassed for the main character as I did in Oh Ha-Ni, or worse, in Yuan Xiang Qin. The treatment is the same, but simply put, the Japanese version is the best, even though the main character is such an idiot (ahem, for real). She was able to tone down the shrillness and stupidity and it wasn't driven to such proportions as the two mentioned above. It's true that both the Taiwanese and Korean versions have more of those "oh dear" moments, but the Japanese version managed to get by without them without a problem. Another great stroke is the main character. He is portrayed as a human or a monster who is absolutely flawless in the little box of his 200+ IQ. The actor is quite handsome, likable, and I think this Irie-kun is the real deal and believable. It's just a shame that I've seen this story so many times already, otherwise I'd definitely enjoy it a lot more.

Maybe if I'd seen this version first or second... it would definitely have impressed me a lot more. It's kind of more "adult", but considering I've seen the Japanese, Korean, and Chinese versions, even the anime one, I still wasn't surprised by anything here, I even found myself not paying attention, I wasn't really enjoying it. It's a shame. Because I think this treatment of a much-maligned theme is of high quality. I hope this version gets into viewers' hands before the anime at least, and definitely before one of the other versions. It didn't happen to me, hence the weaker 4 stars.

Bland and flavorless. It may have an interesting idea, but I dare say it was much more interestingly handled in Goong. The main characters do have some chemistry with each other, but it takes a hell of a long time to get going, given that basically nothing happens for the first five episodes. Plus, I felt like the whole series was all about someone leaving or arriving and the other person either chasing them out or chasing them down. It doesn’t even have that one pretty song. Plus, for however realistic it tries to be, it's just not plausible (the openness of the princess, the odd plotting pretending to be plot, the illogical behavior of some of the characters, the weird decisions they made...). If it had been a movie, then fine, but this way it's a waste of time. I don't recommend it.

All you need is to get the relationships sorted out at the beginning, who's who, and then just fast forward and fast forward and watch for an interesting scene every now and then. What constitutes an interesting scene I'll leave up to you. For example, I was most entertained by the main couple together (he and she are both pretty nice to look at). The others only occasionally deserved to be on screen for five seconds. That's not to say that the main couple were a pair of excellent actors. Oh no, not at all. It's just that their scenes were the most interesting of the entire series; unfortunately, they weren’t always entertaining or what the creators wanted them to be. I probably would have liked this a lot more as a two-part TV special or a two-hour movie, too. The script is obviously more suited to a TV series (which isn't these days) but it's so poorly handled, even all the twists and turns and reasons why this or that, is such a bland and flavorless, forgettable mess. There's rarely anything of interest, and when there is, it's usually a cliché that wouldn’t go missing from any similarly lame Taiwanese (hence Asian) series. And I'd say that's a bad thing. Any surprises? Nope. Touching? Nope. Character development? None. Music? Well, there was some, but, uh... Pacing? Drama? Yaaaaaaaawn. A weak 2 stars.