Forum - View topicREVIEW: SHIBOYUGI: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table 44: CLOUDY BEACH Anime Film Review
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 19170 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Completely agree with James on all points. I'll only add an alert to watch out for a post-credits scene which I suspect will be a lead-in to any additional animation this franchise might get. (You'll know you're coming up on on it when you see cars driving backwards.)
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Greed1914
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Came in to say the same. A bit of a hook for a possible season 2, but otherwise this serves as a pretty good conclusion to anything dangling from season 1's developments. I think that hook, as well as other developments in the movie could have things in a position where there is more of an overarching narrative next time. spoiler[ Since Yuki knows Hakushi is alive, the reason she gave herself to keep playing is gone. Hakushi herself retired, so no need to take up the mantle of someone who dropped it. And we are told there was basically a Candle Woods 2, so it's likely that the slaughter, and not the games, are the point, so Yuki might come back to that offer to help end the games.] I think it did a good job of showing how much Yuki is coming unraveled by hiding enough from us in the right moments to make it believable why she doesn't trust herself. The things the tv series did well are still there. I suppose I didn't pay much mind to the visuals not being anything more impressive there since this felt more like three episodes put together than a movie. Also, I didn't pay much mind to the episode titles until the song for the end credits shoves that part out there. 
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dm
 Subscriber Posts: 1744 |
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Oh, it’s on Netflix, not Crunchyroll.
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Kiwi93
Posts: 540 |
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It’s also on Crunchyroll that’s where I watched it. |
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dm
Subscriber Posts: 1744 |
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It doesn’t turn up for me when I search for it (I’m in the US). Just the TV series. |
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Kiwi93
Posts: 540 |
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I just checked and it’s there for me still (I’m also in the U.S), it’s listed as episode 12. |
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dm
Subscriber Posts: 1744 |
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Thanks! I missed that, what with the episode titles having a consistent theme throughout, including “episode 12”.
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jdnation
Posts: 2526 |
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Finally made time to sit in the comfortable dark and watch this with the headphones on, as anyone should!
The audio from the VA and music (I watch the dub) is excellent as always, and does the heavy lifting for the lack of animation. I agree that I had higher expectations for a movie animation-wise. I didn't expect it to go full high budget spectacle, but I did expect more. That said, I was fine with it as I was with the show thanks to it's mastery of sound and still visuals. That said, it did disappoint in terms of story. It never reached any of the highs or developments of some of the games in the series. It was very much more a character piece on our girl's dealing with the violent aftermath of last season, and the fate of her mentor. The "games" part of what makes playing the death games interesting was largely missing here in this Among Us scenario. It was clever to spoiler[fake one's death, and then just steal a gun from the corpo security], but most of the time there isn't anything really interesting happening game-wise. I do have a questions about spoiler[the ability to survive such a brutal disemboweling attack as happened last season and in the film - I assume that it is an unintentional benefit from having survived many games? Like the replacement of parts of the body eventually add up that someone reaches a state where they can survive being almost entirely disembowled? Like a levelled up player gains an adaptive level of invincibility?] If so, that's a pretty cool idea! I liked the movie well enough, but it felt more like a middle-episode, or an epilogue to Season 1, or at least an interesting start of what could've been Season 2. Frankly the opening with the train sequence seemed like a more entertaining game to watch. I realize the irony that I as an audience member want to see these girls play a fascinating entertaining death game, which is the concept of the world in which these girls are performing in whose draw on their end is that real lives are actually being taken advantage of and are at stake. But that is how it is... With concern to a Death Game, the movie doesn't deliver; especially disappointing considering the series managed to do the games so well, with intriguing dilemmas, puzzles and conflict and deliver on the catharsis and character portraits and studies. |
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champeagle3
Posts: 68 |
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Agree on all points, James. Excellent write-up. Especially loved the OST callout. Great reminder about it being one of the year’s best. I kept hearing "L-O-V-E" being played in the background of that final scene and the drink order followed by the build up to the big band rendition had me howling. Absolutely wild way to end the movie.
Quick suggested edit: spoiler[Koyomi's Hakushi's friend/ drinking buddy, not student. Essay's Hakushi's student who studied her and wanted to take on her goal of 99 games.] |
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IronWish
 Posts: 260 Location: Ukraine |
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Watching it has been a positively suffocating experience. I think biggest benefit of going movie route was structural instead of hypothetical production values uplift (which it doesn't really needed considering peculiar chosen aesthetics of Shiboyugi). With no need to cut itself into neat 22 minute chucks it can orchestrate the mood much more efficiently, and also as viewers we don't get a break which allows to process the events and discuss it with other people.
At some points during the movie my brain was firing on all cylinders just trying to keep the grasp of the plot. In other circumstances this would be a harsh criticism, but here I'm pretty sure the effect is deliberate, as it puts us in the same hazy headspace Yuki is for the most of the movie. And now we have a fuller picture for why adaptation has rearranged Candle Woods placement in the story. Seems like main throughline of the anime is diving into Yuki's psyche to see what motivates her to keep playing. Early on it was simply titular to put food on the table. As disastrous and horrifying as Candle Woods events were, Yuki seemingly compartmentalised them without processing properly. She just kept playing without giving it much thought. So, by removing context of previous events, adaptation gave us, viewers, a privilege to see it through the same lens as Yuki. But by the time of episode 5 interlude Yuki has made enough money to fully void her pre-existing motivation, which led her to a slump resulting in her almost dying in Golden Bath. This led to Yuki digging deep into herself to find a reason to keep going, that's why we've seen Candle Woods in a framing device of her recalling its events. She looks back at Hakushi, Kyara, Moegi (and also Mishiro), which were all much more driven players than her. So she decides for herself to fulfill the dream of her fallen mentor. That kept her going for a while, but by the time of Cloudy Beach all the death and suffering chipped away enough of her soul for the seed of doubt to grow: whose mantle did she actually took over? Was it supposedly noble goal of Hakushi, or selfish murder spree of Kyara? Now, by the end of the movie, she knows Hakushi is not dead, and Yuki has personally murdered one person who was more motivated (and arguably better fit) to realise Hakushi's dream. This once more leaves her in place where she has no good reason to keep playing death games and will have to reinvent it again. So I really hope we'll see more of Shiboyugi in the future. |
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Greed1914
Posts: 5402 |
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With the last bit after the credits, I'm assuming it will now be that she plays in order to help stop the games somehow. Having no particular need to play wouldn't be very interesting, and they could get some mileage out of the conflict of Yuki putting herself at risk, possibly killing others/preventing them from surviving, all to hopefully stop the games.
Not sure. Ever since that happened, I've wondered if Hakushi got like that over the course of so many games, or if she won so many games because she was like that. When Kyara reveals that she has subdermal armor to make herself damage resistant, Yuki comments that it's cheating. On the other hand, Hakushi talks to her handler in front of the cleanup crew like it's nothing, and I have to imagine a body that hard to kill is also cheating. I still can't say how Hakushi ended up that way, but it seems like the game masters aren't bothered if someone uses their winnings to get an advantage. |
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