Forum - View topicREVIEW: Looking Up at the Half-Moon Sub.DVD
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MeisterYM
Posts: 44 |
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I liked it.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Nick and Gabriella (who reviewed this in Shelf Life), I thank you both for taking this show to task and ripping it new orifices. It wants to be emotionally touching but just comes across as an insipid and poorly-animated KEY knockoff.
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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This one had quiet the odyssey to getting released over here if I remember correctly...it wasn't worth the wait.
The only good thing I can say about it is that when the girl said she wanted to climb the mountain I thought it would take the whole series to get up there and for the love plot to come out into the open but it did both within the first episode. I didn't end up finishing it, though. It's a clunker.
Yes, that's a good way of seeing it; a poor imitation of something successful. It always happens whenever something makes a splash. |
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getchman
 Space CowboyPosts: 9120 Location: Bedford, NH |
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just take a moment to remember that this is the show that idiot paid for with students loans and got sent back to jail for due to attending a con full of children.
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Angel'sArcanum
 Posts: 303 Location: Toronto, Ontario |
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Contrarily I like this show a fair bit. I think given Rika's sheltered upbringing and personality she'd be more volatile and weird towards Yuichi having the nude mags and such, so the "weird dramatic misunderstandings" come off fine to me.
On that note, it's interesting how the series uses something as peculiar as porno mags for some dramatic and thematic heft; the old man left his porno collection for Yuichi as a memento for his passing and he has to deal with trying to keep things steady with the sick and frail Rika and trying to honour the dying wish of an old man through something as lewd but honest as that. I think him burning the collection was a bit drastic a decision, but it was still a rough choice he had to make. Plus the series has a nice little ending to not try and yank tears of sadness out of you. The series isn't fresh on my mind since I saw it a few years ago so I can't recall all the details but I felt it had a lot that worked and it's still in my top 50 (it's not quite a masterpiece yet though) although I will concede it is a butt ugly series for sure. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Meanwhile Your Lie in April, which seemed to get nice reviews on here I found morally deprived and insipid. Most of the series' ordeals could be solved if they took Kousei to a psychiatrist, but instead these stupid middle-schoolers he calls "friends" think they know what's best for the mentally scarred kid and keep positively reinforcing him to play the piano despite it being the source of all the trauma which is just wrong. I know Nick mentioned the "comedy" portion of the series being a negative and I'm glad that was addressed, but it's way too problematic to be brushed aside. Physically abusing and blackmailing someone with a serious illness the way the series does and playing it for a laugh is just repulsive. Plus it tried to take 'catharsis' a bit too literally and was incredibly strained and bogus; Kousei's problems were just solved through playing the piano and he achieved full closure  . Most of it comes from Kaori trying to push Kousei into doing the piano again, but she never really overtly tells him he should live a full life doing something he enjoys(/ed) and not waste away his youth, and instead she does stuff like steal his wallet and register him in an upcoming piano contest on a whim and we're supposed to think that's hilarious.
With all this talk of manipulative drama, the series tries to make Kaori sympathetic purely because of the fact that she's dying and we're supposed to excuse all the vile things she's done, even yelling at Kousei to do more practice when he isn't doing it at the time and visiting her as she lay on a hospital bed. She is just cancerous. Then we have the poetic monologues which leave absolutely nothing to the imagination as the series and its characters deliver these rather self-gratifying pieces about conveying their feelings to no end and it gets absolutely ridiculous, especially considering there are several times when the characters themselves espouse "we are musicians, we have to convey our feelings through our music". I was glad when the last music number just relied on the audio-visual component and not everyone dissecting every minuscule bit of the performances and such, but by that time the series was already damaged beyond repair really. As for the story, it's pretty sluggishly paced in the first half due to episode-long inner monologue fests taking up all the time really and it doesn't really get you to care. The latter half is just totally aimless and tries to toy with the awful romance subplots which are half-baked and inane and then it just shoehorns in that pointless arc with blondie's little sister because there's nothing else to do since they didn't give Kousei any real ambition and Kaori as the big driving force is in the hospital just waiting to get to the finale and reveal the big twist (the incredibly obvious and lame "lie") that just makes one more little mess for the characters and the story at the end. It seemed the whole point of the series was Kousei overcoming his anguish and moving on with his life, but that was pretty much closed around the half way point and its methods were still ultimately jaded and mean, so it all feels so trivial. Despite all the floundering psuedo-intellectual musings trying to tell so much about the characters, they still feel largely under-characterized and are all but ignored in the latter half. Wataru added like nothing, the other girl was a moron, Kousei's rivals became his besties through sharing an egg sandwich but don't really have a presence, and that prodigy pianist that was Kousei's mom's friend hardly did anything. The series was all-in-all offensive and boring but thankfully quite forgettable and it seems I sit on the opposite fence in regards to it and HanTsuki, but I thought I would just throw it out there to get some of it off my chest. /rant That was probably quite messy, but it just kind of pours out more and more as I write; probably missed some stuff, but that's part of my two cents at least. |
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Philmister978
Posts: 305 |
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I've seen the series a fair bit before, and as I keep on watching, I kinda have to agree with how the series, well, is. There's quite a bit of forced and confusing drama to the point where I pretty much just stopped paying attention to the conflicts going on. I think by episode four, the only character I gave two shits about was the nurse because she looked like she could have been a more interesting character had she not have been in this series.
And there's definitely something to say about the production values too- This is not one of Group TAC's better outings. The animation's flat and stale and the backgrounds (for all the episodes) look like they were all knocked up in the same five minutes as each other. The audio's just as lackluster too, with poor sound mixing and the actors really sounding like they don't want anything to do with this. ---- Also:
I have to agree on that, then again, I thought KEY, and the numerous knock offs it spawned, weren't doing a good job to begin with. In fact, the only good thing I can day about Your Lie is that it looked pretty (another reason why I don't like these kinds of shows, most of them, including KEY's, tend to have ugly character designs and/or animation). It may be off topic, and it may be really unpopular, but I had to say it. |
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鳳凰の王
 Posts: 28 |
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Its Bayesian estimate ranked it at 71, the last time I checked, so this review is statistically wrong.
Then again, preferences change over time. |
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Blue21
Posts: 244 |
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Popularity =/= Quality |
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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While I did find some enjoyment out of this series, it really put me off when Yuichi spoiler[ends up in a women's apartment, is about to do the deed, and is only stopped by outside interference.] Came out of nowhere, hero was more than willing...
That's what really did it for me. But, has been awhile since I last saw it. Thing is, I can't really remember something else that I had an issue with. Could be there are some minor things, but this isn't a show I want to rewatch. And for those mentioning Your Lie in April, I'm another that didn't enjoy it. Felt like it was going for melodrama from episode one, so I was dreading what was to come. Couldn't finish the series, and don't plan on doing so. Just felt so empty, and cruel... |
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SpacemanHardy
Posts: 2509 |
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Speaking about that, I wonder whatever happened to ol' Corey. He should be out of jail by now, but I seriously doubt he's going to be going anywhere near the anime industry anytime soon. 
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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This isn't how opinions work. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Yeah, that was a sorry saga. Plus in America student loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy, so he'll have his debts hanging over him for a long time. |
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zztop
Posts: 645 |
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The anime was based on the 8-volume light novel series of the same name.
It aired before the final LNs were published though. It also got a TV series and movie adaptation. |
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grooven
Posts: 1424 Location: Canada |
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I tried watching this back in the day and couldn't be bothered to finish it for many of the reasons Nick stated. KEY does drama the best and watching this was like a watered down version.
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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Though I'm not so sure how valid the KEY comparisons are, as this wasn't based on a VN and doesn't have any overt supernatural elements. |
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