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This Week in Anime - Pacific Rim is Back in Black




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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3629
PostPosted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:41 pm Reply with quote
Yeah, wasn't expecting much. Thanks for the insight.
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Varkias



Joined: 20 Oct 2010
Posts: 30
PostPosted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 5:27 pm Reply with quote
It was generic, but I enjoyed it. *shrug*
I'm not sure there's much point in someone who didn't enjoy at least the first film in reviewing it, though.
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 7:27 pm Reply with quote
This is probably the last hurrah for Polygon on Netflix, which...good.
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Abecedarian1995
ANN Assistant Editor


Joined: 29 Aug 2020
Posts: 17
PostPosted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 7:55 pm Reply with quote
Varkias wrote:

I'm not sure there's much point in someone who didn't enjoy at least the first film in reviewing it, though.


As has been mentioned before, TWiA isn't a review and shouldn't be regarded as one. If you're looking for a review of Pacific Rim: The Black, James did one for this site and gave it a pretty respectable grade.
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Philmister978



Joined: 12 Jun 2011
Posts: 301
PostPosted: Wed Mar 24, 2021 10:25 am Reply with quote
Beatdigga wrote:
This is probably the last hurrah for Polygon on Netflix, which...good.

I sincerely hope that's the case. Their art style is really just only one step above EX-Arm, but with somehow choppier animation. How is it that they've gotten progressively stagnant/worse when companies like Orange have gotten better? The least Polygon could have done is stop the damn frame skipping at least because it's a huge reason why their work looks like garbage outside of the shading.
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
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Location: New York
PostPosted: Wed Mar 24, 2021 10:44 am Reply with quote
Philmister978 wrote:
Beatdigga wrote:
This is probably the last hurrah for Polygon on Netflix, which...good.

I sincerely hope that's the case. Their art style is really just only one step above EX-Arm, but with somehow choppier animation. How is it that they've gotten progressively stagnant/worse when companies like Orange have gotten better? The least Polygon could have done is stop the damn frame skipping at least because it's a huge reason why their work looks like garbage outside of the shading.


This was a backlogged show from everything I understand, and Netflix has made it a point to advertise putting money into the industry and making partnerships with other studios (Hence the Godzilla anime getting actual good animators this time, their Terminator anime getting Production IG, and according to the rumor mill, MAPPA animating Chainsaw Man for them,)

Which again, good.
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 28 Oct 2018
Posts: 483
PostPosted: Wed Mar 24, 2021 8:08 pm Reply with quote
Varkias wrote:
It was generic, but I enjoyed it. *shrug*
I'm not sure there's much point in someone who didn't enjoy at least the first film in reviewing it, though.


I get the sentiment, but put it this way: what if I had liked it? I like leaving the door open to being surprised and liking a show in the end. I didn't know anything about Heaven Official's Blessing, would up leaving a great impact on me. I normally hate edgy murder shows, but I loved Talentless Nana enough to where I finished watching it on my own, outside of work.
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ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor


Joined: 19 Jan 2012
Posts: 638
PostPosted: Wed Mar 24, 2021 8:27 pm Reply with quote
Beatdigga wrote:
Philmister978 wrote:
Beatdigga wrote:
This is probably the last hurrah for Polygon on Netflix, which...good.

I sincerely hope that's the case. Their art style is really just only one step above EX-Arm, but with somehow choppier animation. How is it that they've gotten progressively stagnant/worse when companies like Orange have gotten better? The least Polygon could have done is stop the damn frame skipping at least because it's a huge reason why their work looks like garbage outside of the shading.


This was a backlogged show from everything I understand, and Netflix has made it a point to advertise putting money into the industry and making partnerships with other studios (Hence the Godzilla anime getting actual good animators this time, their Terminator anime getting Production IG, and according to the rumor mill, MAPPA animating Chainsaw Man for them,)

Which again, good.

This sure sounds like wild baseless speculation. Polygon already has another season of Knights of Sidonia coming up. Netflix has been working with IG for years now while still putting out work by Polygon. I've watched plenty of them and largely find them pretty sucky (especially those god awful Zilla films), but I'm not gonna pretend they're somehow going away based on that.
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Philmister978



Joined: 12 Jun 2011
Posts: 301
PostPosted: Wed Mar 24, 2021 11:04 pm Reply with quote
Beatdigga wrote:
Philmister978 wrote:
Beatdigga wrote:
This is probably the last hurrah for Polygon on Netflix, which...good.

I sincerely hope that's the case. Their art style is really just only one step above EX-Arm, but with somehow choppier animation. How is it that they've gotten progressively stagnant/worse when companies like Orange have gotten better? The least Polygon could have done is stop the damn frame skipping at least because it's a huge reason why their work looks like garbage outside of the shading.


This was a backlogged show from everything I understand, and Netflix has made it a point to advertise putting money into the industry and making partnerships with other studios (Hence the Godzilla anime getting actual good animators this time, their Terminator anime getting Production IG, and according to the rumor mill, MAPPA animating Chainsaw Man for them,)

Which again, good.

I'm not buying it, their other non-American titles have many of the same flaws as PR: The Black does, even their films have this issue. And I don't get why they chose this as their style.
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MFrontier



Joined: 13 Apr 2014
Posts: 10946
PostPosted: Thu Mar 25, 2021 9:43 am Reply with quote
I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. It was nice to see a series focusing on a sibling dynamic and how that lends itself well to the Drift, and it was a solidly and competently told story about a more intimate and smaller-scale story within the overall PM verse. I think we should only care about the parents and the other kids in so far as they impact the siblings.

People keep talking about how stiff Polygon's animation is, so I was prepared for the worst, but I was almost surprised by how expressive this was. Or at least I felt it was effective enough for the story being told here.

The Kaiju are in-line with how the Kaiju are depicted in the movies. So not really as out there as anime Kaiju, more like scaled down versions of Ultraman Kaiju. I don't think Del Toro would have a problem with it.
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AntiKuro



Joined: 01 Aug 2017
Posts: 200
PostPosted: Thu Mar 25, 2021 10:05 am Reply with quote
I.... Actually really liked it, but I also really love the Pacific Rim franchise. Was worried because I hate Netflix weird animation style that they sometimes do (and has stopped me from watching The Dragon Prince still) but it actually wasn't that bad.

I don't think I'd recommend it to someone who doesn't like the franchise though.
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3629
PostPosted: Thu Mar 25, 2021 3:33 pm Reply with quote
Abecedarian1995 wrote:

As has been mentioned before, TWiA isn't a review and shouldn't be regarded as one. If you're looking for a review of Pacific Rim: The Black, James did one for this site and gave it a pretty respectable grade.


I missed that review, thanks for the link to the additional perspective
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Varkias



Joined: 20 Oct 2010
Posts: 30
PostPosted: Thu Mar 25, 2021 9:15 pm Reply with quote
FinalVentCard wrote:
Varkias wrote:
It was generic, but I enjoyed it. *shrug*
I'm not sure there's much point in someone who didn't enjoy at least the first film in reviewing it, though.


I get the sentiment, but put it this way: what if I had liked it? I like leaving the door open to being surprised and liking a show in the end. I didn't know anything about Heaven Official's Blessing, would up leaving a great impact on me. I normally hate edgy murder shows, but I loved Talentless Nana enough to where I finished watching it on my own, outside of work.


I guess it's a matter of how you consume media. Something that's an exception in a genre seems a lot more probable to me than an exception within a setting. I guess it also matters what it is that you like or dislike about a given property. Given the problems you had with the first film, I'm not sure that anything based on it could interest you without diverging wildly from the baseline, and I don't think anywhere near enough "Pacific Rim" product exists to start doing that while still using the name yet (although of course as the creator, del Toro could get away with it without seeming too divergent).
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Multi-Facets



Joined: 15 Oct 2019
Posts: 211
PostPosted: Fri Mar 26, 2021 1:23 pm Reply with quote
Personally, something about Mei's overall design reminds me of Iria from "Iria: Zeiram the Animation" instead. I think it's the armor.

I'm not sold on Boy or the animation either. Some CGI styles are kinda disturbing when it comes to adult female characters; too many look like toy babies. At least Hayley isn't an adult and is supposed to look young, for instance, so that helps.
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