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REVIEW: Big Fish & Begonia




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LegitPancake



Joined: 26 Jun 2017
Posts: 1294
Location: Texas, USA
PostPosted: Thu Apr 05, 2018 1:03 pm Reply with quote
This is the first time I've heard of this film, and Funimation/Shout has done a pretty terrible job promoting the film. Here is the link to the theater list, but it doesn't seem like it will be playing at all in my state. I hate how anime (I know this is Chinese but still) always gets such limited releases in the States. Guess I'll just wait till the home video.
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Kimiko_0



Joined: 31 Aug 2008
Posts: 1796
Location: Leiden, NL, EU
PostPosted: Thu Apr 05, 2018 1:51 pm Reply with quote
Will this movie be added to the ANNcyclopedia?
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Marc Nix



Joined: 13 Nov 2014
Posts: 18
PostPosted: Thu Apr 05, 2018 4:32 pm Reply with quote
LegitPancake wrote:
This is the first time I've heard of this film, and Funimation/Shout has done a pretty terrible job promoting the film.


To a degree, yes, but marketing animation is pretty tricky. (Hopefully you've heard of Maria & The Witch's Flower and also know that the Ghibli collection is running in theaters, but then how familiar are you with The Breadwinner, Birdboy: The Forgotten Children, or even MindGame -- all films distributed recently by GKIDS, but unless you're a major animation fan in a big market, they're probably all unfamiliar to most people.) Animation fans are blessed when anything breaks through; typically, most people find out about amazing animated films if/when they're lucky enough to be nominated and lose the Oscar to whatever Pixar movie came out that year.

Funimation can't even use its own typical tricks of flier'ing anime fansites and hoping that the otaku core base takes notice because it isn't anime, and anime fans can be extremely discerning and particular. I mean, there just is no ChineseAnimationNewsNetwork website that I know of for Funimation to turn to..

In newspapers around my city, I've seen a number of reviews of the movie, and I know it is playing around here in a few places (perhaps being helped by a rather large Chinese-descent audience to market to in the SF Bay Area.) So, it's tough and it sucks that it's so limited in rollout (especially if it's as good as ANN is rating it,) but it's not completely being sent to die. If you lived where it was playing, you might see Big Fish & Begonia getting a little more play, and when it comes to home video/streaming, there might be a push there as well.
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Chrno2



Joined: 28 May 2004
Posts: 6171
Location: USA
PostPosted: Thu Apr 05, 2018 5:13 pm Reply with quote
It was okay. I feel these ratings give this film WAY too much credit.

I saw it at the festival. It was beautiful, but not that impressive. The one thing that bugs me with Chinese animation and even other types of animation is the extensive amount of CG used for certain scenes. I kind of look at it as a form of laziness. It takes away from the emersion. You're looking at all these great painted scenes, animations with the characters and off of a sudden you have CG water and CG monsters. There are times when it works but other times it's so obvious it's like why bother. I mean if you're going to spend all that time (and this film took YEARS to make) to make such a film for cripes sake put in the full effort 100%. But hey, I'm just viewer what do I know?

Other than that it's a fun film. The designs were gorgeous. The characters were pretty well rounded, the story...good enough. I saw some quite a bit of Ghibli influences but this film was still pretty much it's own thing. There were quite a bit of laughs in the audience on this film. Yes, folks were snickering about strategic censoring of nudity. Even a mermaid would approve.

I'm glad to see China in the animation game producing their own works and pushing them into the market. So we'll be picking this up. I want to see more Chinese animations making it into the market.
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SejinPK



Joined: 22 Dec 2013
Posts: 129
PostPosted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 12:25 am Reply with quote
Something I noticed about the theater listing on FUNimation's website is that it doesn't include any Cinemark theaters, yet if I go to Cinemark's website and search for the movie, it shows up as screening on April 11th (sub) and 12th (dub). Though, any individual, specific Cinemark theater pulls up a blank. I'm wondering why that discrepancy is there. If FUNi really didn't contract with Cinemark to screen the movie, why would Cinemark even pull it up as a search result? I'd think they just wouldn't have it anywhere on their website.
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nobahn
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Joined: 14 Dec 2006
Posts: 5120
PostPosted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 8:56 am Reply with quote
I am very surprised that:
  1. That the movie title is not listed above Michelle Liu's name; and
  2. That that there is no Encyclopedia page listed here. I respectfully -- to say nothing of humbly -- submit that that there should be a link to an Encyclopedia page there. If all of the Robotech entries can be listed there, then why not Big Fish & Begonia as well?
I am truly puzzled by all of the above.
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Rednimue



Joined: 07 Dec 2016
Posts: 107
PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 6:21 pm Reply with quote
I still have to watch the movie, however it's painfully obvious that this review is more of a publicity stunt, which deliberately exaggerate the merits of the movie, than anything ...

As I said in the comments of the interview to the creators, this is probably sponsored by Shout! Factory, cause there's no other pausible motivation for it to be featured so prominently in an Anime news web site when it has nothing to do with anime at all.

nobahn wrote:
that there is no Encyclopedia page listed here. I respectfully -- to say nothing of humbly -- submit that that there should be a link to an Encyclopedia page there. If all of the Robotech entries can be listed there, then why not Big Fish & Begonia as well?
I am truly puzzled by all of the above.


I think that at the very least Robotech, although "created" in the US, still has something to do with anime (it's a collage of 3 different anime series), while big fish & begonia has literally nothing to do with anime.
I'm well aware that this is the Non Anime But Related category, however as I said before big fish & begonia is 0% anime related and just because there are few other entries that are 0% anime related (like Aeon Flux or BAST off) doesn't mean it has to be listed in the encyclopedia.

In the end it's not up to me to decide, however I'm against it for the simple fact that I don't want ANN to promote the further dilution of what's acceptable as anime or anime related in the eyes of the community and slowly become a MAL 2.0 with its ridiculous policies, regarding what's allowed and what isn't on their messy encyclopedia, seemingly based on the mood of the administrators and/or whatever, part of the community, feels like it's anime enough to be included.
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