Food Wars: Even Food Manga Can Become Stale

So here’s your long awaiting manga review. I was going to do “Fire Force” originally but I just finished catching up on “Food Wars” and I want to talk about it. You see, food for me is a guilty pleasure but I don’t mean in eating it (that only applies to chips and gravy). For me, food becomes a guilty pleasure when I’m watching or in this case, reading about the cooking of delicious food and it’s obvious it’s the same for others because it spawned its own sub genre of cooking manga with Food Wars being on top. I personally do enjoy Food Wars but I feel like it’s starting to stagnate a bit in its newer chapters and upon rereading, I got a couple more criticism to level at it. Of course you can expect me to cover Fire Force in the future but right now, let’s start roasting this manga (pun definitely intended).

The plot follows our main character called Yukihira Souma who is like every single other shounen character with an alive father: he wants to surpass his father but since this is a cooking manga, he wants to surpass his father’s culinary skills. After protecting their restaurant from what I think is property sharks, his dad closes shop and ships his ass to Tootsuki Academy to make him into a better chef. While he is there, he makes friends, meets Erin who kind of fills in the rival cliche and tries to grow as an character. There is some elements of a typical shounen manga like the underdog yet unbeatable main character who is somehow weird and unique to make them appeal to the target audience, there is new and stronger characters being constantly introduced to present new challenges and the MC has a large supporting cast that all grow in their own way. What makes it different that instead of bombastic fights, we get people cooking and then having the judges overreact to how good their food is which I will admit, can be pretty funny but it gets old after a while. They are done with so much frequency, they turn from a gimmick to just plain old cliche and for me, the “fights” aren’t the most interesting part. I found far more enjoyment from the parts where we see our characters grow because that’s when I believe they are really chefs and not just food magicians. Every time I see them battling it out in the arena, I know they will deliver their best because the manga demanded it but when it comes to events where they actually have to grow as characters and do something more “slice of life” like having their work experience in a professional kitchen, I feel like I can connect with the characters then. It’s probably just me but I do like these sort of character developing moments and talking about characters, let’s talk about how I feel about them.

I’m going to say it now, I don’t hate as many characters as I did with “Bleach” but it is still pretty bad. Once again, I hate the MC because I just don’t find him relatable or cool in anyway. He is the cooking version of Monkey D. Luffy minus the charm and cool straw hat which pretty much means he always bounces back and is amazing because of his heritage and the fact that he is just so talented and his only flaw is his weird cooking habits. It’s just he is so flawless that he becomes unlikeable and I can’t connect to him. Even Luffy had his flaws and they made him a somewhat likeable character so just follow that model next time. Apart from the MC, everyone else borders between “slightly unlikeable” and “enjoyable to watch” with my favourite being Megumi because she’s just so relatable. She quite clearly has flaws, she is constantly growing and I just love her cooking style. She is to me the ideal MC because we see her lose and we see her grow while Souma has all that experience so there is barely any room for him to grow as a character. Other honourable mentions go to Satoshi because even if he is the stereotypical chill but talented type, I find him funny as a side character and the chairman because he is just so serious but the fact that he strips when he tastes good food and the intensity of said strip is based on how good it is makes him very likeable and a joy to watch in action. I would normally now go in about how I enjoy the other characters but I don’t think the others are very mentionable so let’s just move onto the anime.

It’s alright. That’s all I have to say on it because it’s your normal anime with it meeting all the standards it should be meeting. If anything, I do think the cooking scenes are much better since I think the additions of colour and motion does make these scenes more appealing then it would on paper. As for the “sub or dub” question, it’s all personal preference but I personally like the dub for many personal reasons but mainly because I find the English voice acting not that bad and in fact a slight improvement over the Japanese sub. Now, this all does comes down to personal preference but I would recommend the dub to casuals so just don’t get angry at me for that. You do you, internet like how I am going to demonstrate that by now by dunking on this plot like it’s my chips and gravy.

I already covered why I felt like the series was getting stagnant due to the fact it’s main gimmick became a bit of an old hat and the mangaka noticed this so he tried to introduced stakes (having a “World Trigger” flashback yet) and well, he did it somewhat better than World Trigger’s attempt. It’s just the way it’s implemented is a little rough. Pretty much, Erin’s dad shows up, declares himself the dean of the school because members of the council voted him in and for me, this is a little bit stupid. I mean, why does the council have such power to overthrow the current dean when they are just effectively a student council. It’s just a weird plot hole in my opinion but the other thing I hate about this is the fact they kind of shifted focus. Before this, Food Wars was very slice of life like with it just focusing on different aspects of the school life but with this, it started to turn more and more into a proper shounen title because now we have a proper villain to hate and not friendly competition. This change of focus also meant the series started to introduce typical cliches into the series like one of the main cast turning anti-hero, an seemly unbeatable legion of villains and very poor set up for the final conflict. The only things I can really praise this arc is that going in, I found most of the characters reasoning for doing what they are doing to be believable. I still found Erin’s father’s reveal to be a bit pulled out of nowhere but that’s the standard for new villains but the other thing I can praise about this is the fact it gave us a good ending point. So you are probably thinking “ So why is there still so many words on this paragraph to go?” and the answer is very simple: They did a Death Note. That’s right, they continued after a quite clear ending point. I mean, Souma got his spot on the council which means he had the skills to probably beat his dad now but you see, this whole arc ends their first year at this school. That’s right, there is still two years to go and the mangaka must've reliesed it so let’s introduce another needless villain and to make sure they definitely see that this new villain is a badass and is better than Souma, let’s have his introduction scene be him beating Souma’s dad. That’s right, they warfed Souma’s dad to show that this new villain is a badass. This is probably as bad as that one World Trigger moment or Bleach’s final war arc and I hate it. It feels unnecessary and I feel like this is the end of an enjoyable series if we count the exam arc to be the car crash.

I still think you should read it but I don’t blame you if you don’t see what I see. I’m a lot more sensitive to certain things if you haven’t caught that yet but I do feel like I am being insulted (pun not intended) now with the new villain. He feels needless to the series since the series has done what it wanted to do and it should of ended there. If you want my personal recommendations for cooking manga, mine are “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Sweetness And Lightning” because they not only just a lot more enjoyable due to the absence of shounen cliches, Hell’s Kitchen feels like a much better take on the Food Wars concept and Sweetness is just a great slice of life manga. In the end, I’m going to give Food Wars a 5/10 and if you want to get into the series, I say watch the anime for the food and read the manga for the mediocre plot. So next week is still a bit up in the air but if I can somehow fit in forty-five episodes within a week, I will be tackling “Kamen Rider Ex Aid” which is my first Kamen Rider series I have watched but until then, just check out my YouTube channel for my crap video content and my steam profile if you want to donate me some games for me to review.

Mad Bastards: Why I Hate English Assignments

“What’s this? Another movie review? DxD, what are you like? Doing so many movies in such a short period of time.” Yeah, I don’t need your sarcasm here. I’m only posting this review is because this week, I had to write a review on a movie we had to watch in class and while I could of done two different reviews: one for the blog and one for the assignment, I’m lazy so guess what, I’m retooling another review for the blog. While my teacher actively tries to stop me from writing in class which is weird because I am doing what she wants me to do, she definitely can’t stop now because this is technically my school work now so miss, if you are reading, all I have to say is suck it. I am doing my work for once and you can’t stop me. But anyway, enough of taunting my teacher, let’s talk about the movie or I guess, let’s go to the real intro for the review I had to write.

Why did I have to watch this? We could of watched “Boy” which is a much better experience to watch but no, we had to watch “Mad Bastards” because the authority in charge of schools in WA thought watching a boring movie which is made in WA is much better then let’s say something like “Supersize” which covers a far much relatable topic while being fun. Even if it had to be something within the Oceania region, we could of watched “Boy” because it’s actually well filmed, well paced and a lot more fun to watch. Yes, this movie is boring with a capital B. I get it, it’s supposed to be about family and how failing these relationships can have massive knock back effects on kids but there has been certainly better movies that cover the same topic. Did we have to watch this because SCASA was paid off to make this part of the essential English curriculum or was it because they are full of that Australian pride that it had to be part of the curriculum because “Yeah, Australia”. I mean, my best guess is the fact that it has aborigines in it so they had to show it or the SJW group would of been a bit annoyed with them. Either way, I was given the task to review this and I will review this but they didn’t say it had to be a positive one so I am not holding back on this. Let’s start with the ripping of the plot.

The plot starts with our main man, TJ deciding to go back to his estranged wife and child that he left so he hitchhikes his way back. That’s the whole plot. It’s just one guy who has been absolute idiot all his life, wising up and trying to make amends with his family. While he certainly tries at the beginning when he was helping his brother connect with his family who has turned over a new life in prison, they are rejected at the door by his mother who tells him that they are bad influences on the kids. We also see the knock on effects of this with his (possibly) divorced wife who is in a cycle of being drunk and having abusive boyfriends and this affects their kid, Bullet. Bullet at the start of the movie shows that he is being a delinquent when he sets fire to someone’s house and you can see that the uncle is trying his hardest to fill in the father role while trying to hold the community. There is attempts at telling a story and bring across the message but it is poorly paced and the way it’s been edited makes events go by way too fast.

Like, we only see Bullet commit one crime and then he is put into a sort of program that I think is supposed to be a rehabilitation program, it’s never well explained. The same applies to the wife in this case because we are supposed to believe that she is a constant drunk who is in this cycle of abuse but we only see one case of each these things right at the start and she is pretty much sober for the rest of the movie. The director expects us to believe that all these things are constants in their life but unless you see or know that intention, it makes the movie’s plot look stupid. The movie’s plot is apparently based on true stories from the local community where filming was happening and you can sort of see what they were trying to do with these stories but I don’t think it’s not a very good idea since they don’t contribute to the plot. For me, the plot is very bland and quite blatant with its message so in the end, the whole fact it’s trying to play it like its message is “super deep and meaningful” is complete and utter hogwash.

What also was quite bland is the characters and the actors portraying them. Bullet is portrayed by a local kid and I’m guessing because he was shy, he pretty much says nothing throughout the whole movie. The kid might as well been a paper cut out for all the other actors to work with for all the “acting” he did and the same can be applied to the whole cast. You see, expect for one person (the possible ex-wife), everyone is just random locals and you can see this because every single actor in this movie is so bad. You can tell that they are new to this because they all act very stiff when they are on camera and they have to act. While I do think they are at their best when they aren’t forced to be characters in the story and just doing what they normally do, it still feels very forced. Even the one properly trained actor in the movie comes off stiff at times, especially when it comes to scenes when she has to be emotional and not just drunk. You can find sources saying that most of the scenes were unrehearsed and if the director did this because he thought it would add to the movie, well he is frankly an idiot and a narcissist on top of that. If he actually hired proper actors and then let them rehearsed, this would be a better movie but he didn’t because he thought that “the people we cast will shape our story” and I don’t blame him for thinking that but he isn’t the next Hitchcock. His decision to use untrained people in the end is just another bullet to the foot and it also makes you wonder what did they spend three million dollars on because it’s certainly not the editing crew.

For me, the filming is serviceable as well as the music but in the end, the way it was edited is what bothers me. It took them three years to film this and you would think with that time, they would have the time to film each scene to acceptable quality but for me, it feels like each scene is separate from each other which can break the flow of the story. What doesn’t help is the fact there is the occasional montage which seems like an easy way to forward the plot but really just messes with the time of the plot. I personally find it hard to watch and pay attention with just the constant jumping between characters. I mean, it’s already hard for me to pay attention without doing something but I did make an active effort to pay attention but I still had trouble and I think that’s my whole thought on this movie.

I could go on about the themes but I don’t think they are that important. For me, a good movie should be at least competent in other areas so they aren’t overshadowed by the bad things because it then distracts you. With that said, I’m giving this a 3/10. The theme of the story is generic, the performances given are borderline bad and the editing is amateurish. It’s just very boring and not a fun watch and I do think there is more entertaining movies which does the same theme much better.

And that’s the movie for you. If you can’t tell, I was very bored when writing this but nevertheless, it’s good training because when you are a reviewer, you can’t really be picky and you have to work with what you got. With that said, I have another movie and TV review lined up but I’m need to fill in this month’s proper manga review so next week is “Food Wars”. Can’t wait to talk about that pile of slight disappointment but as always, if you want to see my other content, links in the side bar to my YouTube channel and my steam profile if you want to donate anything to me.

The Ubermosh Series: Uberneon Hell

Yes, I did promise that this week was going to be a manga review but roughly a week ago (from the time I post this review), a new game in this series was released and I thought it would be better to get the whole series out of the way now. Plus, I am writing this while working on said manga review so get off my back here. I should probably learn how to pace myself when it comes to writing these but I stopped reading “Rookies” to write these reviews so I might as well make it worth it. With that said, let’s talk about the neon coloured bullet hell that is UBERMOSH and yes, I will be typing it like that every time. 

UBERMOSH is a series that contains six games in its series now which goes in following order: UBERMOSH, UBERMOSH Black, UBERMOSH Volume 3, UBERMOSH Wraith, UBERMOSH Volume 5 and then UBERMOSH Santicide and yes, that naming convention is very uberconfusing. The base of the UBERMOSH games from the very little lore I can extract from the games is that we are in the future, you are “The Blade Saint” who has came back to the “colony” after 200 years and the “colony” demands violence so you do that by shooting the hell out of some alien looking robots with laser based weaponry and maybe the aliens you shoot are the “colony”. Yeah, the lore of UBERMOSH is super vague and I had trouble finding it because as far as I know, you only get these lore bits from the start of the original UBERMOSH game and the tutorials in latter games. In fact, it’s so lax on the lore, I had a bit of a laughing fit when I was reading the steam community post for Santicide’s release and they said that they are thankful for the community for “enjoying the lore”. Yes, we are enjoying the very vague lore you are giving us. As far as I know, this could be an intergalactic cooking show being hosted by a robotic Weasel Snipes from how little lore there is. For me, having lore is nice to have but I wish they did a more “DOOM” approach to it where the lore is there for you if you want to read it but it isn’t some super vague crap but just like “DOOM”, you can just ignore it and get to the part where you shoot demons in the face or I guess in this case, using your bright blue uberkatana to deflect lasers back at these aliens a-holes.

Gameplay wise, it’s a rather excellent bullet hell shooter. While it isn’t on rails like most other bullet hell shooters, it’s still as hard them and it’s even harder since you have to worry about what’s going on from all around you and not just in front. These aliens/cyborgs will swarm you like their Zerg ubercounterparts and they will not hesitate to shoot you which is great because you have a katana. A katana that can deflect lasers like it’s a lightsaber. Yes, you do have a katana that can deflect laser shots because this is UBERMOSH, baby. In my humble opinion, the addition of the katana is what makes this game great. While it’s hard to deflect shots and it’s probably easier to just shoot them, it’s a lot more satisfying to deflect multiple shots back into the horde as you cut them down because the colony needs their uberviolence and I don’t blame them if it’s this satisfying. The game also has different class mods you can enable in the main menu which changes up the playstyle. The standard of no class mod lets you pick up guns and use the katana with only 4 HP and is just a great starter. The Kenshi mod increases your HP to 6 but then restricts you to the katana which is more of a advantage then anything because your katana is pretty much a better gun. The Gunner mod doesn’t let you use a sword at the cost of having your guns be full auto and is great for just cheesing it up. Warlock let’s you start with the best gun at the cost of 3 HP which is in my opinion not a bad trade off. You get to start with a decent gun so if you are skilled enough, the HP limit is no handicap. They also three other classes of the names “Wraith”, “Catalyst” and “Psyker” and I have no idea what they do. They are tied to this meter called “Brainclap” and all they do is reduce the max limit on the brainclap meter at the cost of lower HP and this ties into one of my three complaints.

For me, what brings this game down is the fact it isn’t good at explaining any of the other mechanics. Like, we have meters called “Manastrike” and “Brainclap” introduced in later games and the game doesn’t explain what they are, how you fill up these meters or what the different mods do. For example, in Santicide, you can choose between “Single Strike + Shredder”, “Double Strike” and “Single, Double, Triple” and I don’t know what each one does or what they do differently. All I know is that the shredder mod just launches purple arc lasers at random. I think the series can do a lot to help explain some of these other stuffs outside of the basic controls. Since we are talking about the mechanics, I wanna talk about how much they haven’t changed these games over six games. Like, each game adds one new mechanic and a pallet swap apart from that, it’s pretty much the same game. Like, Santicide literally added a harder mode and the strike system and that’s it. It’s just a pallet swap of the original game with two new things and they charge five bucks off the bat for this. There’s a point where you should just being adding this to the original game but I hate how it’s like this. If you weren’t a smart and savvy player like me and brought the bundle while it’s cheap, keeping up with the series can get bothersome and it’s not worth it since they do very little to give you incentive to buy the sequel, even at a cheap price. And you know what, it’s a good thing these things go for five bucks each because these games have a super short shelf cycle. This is a problem with most arcade games since they are so short, they mainly based on novelty and replay ability. UBERMOSH certainly has replay ability but that’s mainly if you want to go for the achievements because if you have it’s sequel, you have no reason to go back to those original games because of complaint two. While yes, I understand the devs need the money but come on guys, it’s making your old games redundant and it kind of makes you look like an ass.

Do I still recommend UBERMOSH? That’s a certain uberyes from me with a solid 6/10 across the board because there are a well crafted series of bullet hell arcade shooters. You can pick up the associated bundle for ten bucks right now but if you only want one, I suggest going with the latest one which is Santicide at the moment and see if you can beat my highscore of 1803 in Santicide mode. If you want something slightly cheap, pick up the original or Black for like 3 bucks and you want a less confusing experience. If you want my personal recommendation, I would say go Wraith since it’s a perfect uberbalance of not being too complicated and not too simple in my opinion. Next week should be the manga review unless I end up retooling a movie review I am currently writing in English for an assessment so the upcoming weeks might be an ubermess. Remember to checkout the sidebars for my YouTube channel to watch my badly edited videos and my Steam profile if you want to stalk me.

The Undiscussibles: Tackling The Virus Known As The Fantasy Genre

I had a whole week of nothing to think of what I was going to review and I spent that week reading fantasy manga so here’s the result of me doing nothing at all. Just a load of short reviews on what I would consider to be semi decent fantasy manga. I mean, I could talk about Smite again but I’m saving that ball of raging fury for our anniversary. Yeah, I am going to be squirrelling away all my complaints on Smite for now but let’s move back to the main topic. This is in fact my second try on trying to cover the large cancerous lump which is the fantasy genre. I do make it out to be more awful then it is but it’s bad because they are all tripping over each other. I have read an awful lot of fantasy manga for this “article” and they all seem to cover another one’s plot point or using the proper slang of “checkpoint”. For me, the fact they are doing very little in my opinion of trying to be something unique, they breed a sense of mediocrity. I read about fifty different mangas for this and I will be only talking about the ones I would consider to be decent enough to be discussed. Just keep in mind that all the manga I will talk about are solid 5-6/10s so if I praise anything in this article, just remember it’s decent, not amazing. Also, I won’t be covering “The Saga Of Tanya The Evil” or “Overlord” in this because they are too good to be cramped into a crap review format like this which is designed for stuff that are too short or mediocre for a proper review.

First up is “Tensei Shitara Ken Deshita” and I’m starting off with the only one I would solidly recommend. Sure, I would maybe recommend everything else that I will bring up in the review but I would recommend this one on top of everything else and yes, it’s mainly because of preferences. Following one of the only three ways you can get your ass into a fantasy world, our MC gets killed because that’s apparently the best way to get your incarnation of yourself into a fantasy land according to all the manga I read. Our character is then turned into a living sword where he just did his thing (which is killing monsters) until he was an idiot and get stuck in the ground. He is then saved by an escaping cat girl slave called Fran and after slaughtering the chasing demon bear and the slave trader, they form a “master and student” relationship with the sword, now called “Master” being the one who wears the pants in the relationship obviously. If you didn’t get what are my one of my preferences from that debrief, you are probably blind. Personal bias about catgirls aside, everything about this is pretty good. I find the character designs to be bland compared to the fantasy standard but I do like the character dynamic between Fran and Master and I don’t mind the art style that much. I recommend this if you are in the market for some cute catgirls and some good fantasy action.

Next up is “The Ride On King” which only has two chapters at time of writing but I’m recommending this on the basis of it being too ridiculous of an idea to not even mention it. The Ride On King starts by following the president of Pursia, a mister Alexander Purchinov and he has only one desire and that’s to ride things but he has lost that desire since he has rode everything already in his world. After being nearly squashed by his own head after stopping terriosts by himself, he gets summoned to the fantasy world, after saving two girls from a wyvrn and then riding it, he decides that he will stay in this world so he can ride everything that this world has to offer. Did I also mention that this man knows so many different martial arts, is built like Alex Armstrong from Fullmetal Alchemist with a matching mustache and he had a pet tiger that he rode everywhere back on Earth? This is a self inserted fanfic of men’s dreams and ambitions if I ever saw one and that’s why I recommend it. It’s just so stupid but as a man, I feel like my pride is at risk if I don’t follow the quite possibly, the manliest man to be put on paper. This is one you should keep an eye on if you just like stupid things like this.

We started off with two “absolute reads” so let’s lower that bar of expectations with “Gal Tensei Isekai Seikatsu Maji Darui”. Pretty much the plot goes, three gyraus get squashed by bus, find themselves in a fantasy world and it goes on from there. Luckily for them, they have phones and they can still access Twitter so nothing is pretty much changed except it is in a fantasy world so hooray I guess. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate it but I certainly don’t like it. It’s a meh for me and I feel like I can only recommend it if you want something a little more light to read. If you find the time, just try reading this, it might grab you if you like gyraus.

Let’s keep this mediocre train going with “Isekai Nonbiri Nouka” which started off interesting but just became a bit boring for my tastes. The plot starts with Machio Hiraku who dies after being overworked. He then meets “God” who takes pity on him and decides to reincarnate (he calls it teleporting but it’s pretty much reincarnating) him in a different world so Hiraku decides he wants to be a farmer with unlimited stamina and because apparently “God” was so chuffed by his politeness, “God” let home have some freebies. From there, he just starts farming and he eventually attracts different animals and eventually other races (mainly women) and he makes a village. I do like it but for me, it got a bit dry after a while like most slice of life mangas I read. I do also hate how hard it is to keep track of time when reading it. It started off easy because it tells you that it’s like 10 days to this task but then suddenly, something big happens like one of the characters are pregnant now and it makes you wonder where are we now? It’s just something that just bothers me while I’m reading but it is certainly a more casual take on the life of a fantasy farmer but it’s bit too boring for me so maybe you can find something funny about a guy who keeps a giant spider who makes clothing for him, as a pet and you enjoy the sight of dogs playing chess.

Next is “A Harem In The Fantasy World Dungeon”. Pretty much our MC wants to kill himself and after coming across a site and answering a bunch of questions, he gets teleported to a fantasy world. He then finds himself in a village and after saving the village from bandits, things just move on from there until he decides that he wants to have a slave harem I think. I only just finished reading this a day ago since writing and I can barely remember anything apart from the fact that he now has a cat girl as a slave and there was a very “uncomfortable” sex scene which bordered softcore pornography, it’s pretty forgettable. If your idea of entertainment is softcore porn, go ahead but it’s not for me, even if it has catgirls in it.

I had two lined up for the token “revenge story” slot so let’s go with the one I think is slightly more entertaining. “Nidome No Yuusha” is about Ukei being summoned to an fantasy world to be a hero and after killing the demon king, he was killed off. As he died, he swears his revenge on those deceived him and blah blah. What’s important here that after his death, it turns out that was the tutoria which means he gets a restart button. He pretty much just starts working out of a underworld slum with a bunny girl on his side after he pretty much tortures the princess that summoned him. You ask me, even with the dull start, I think it has some promise of being entertaining in the future but I wouldn’t take my word on that. It might get good in the future or it might not, who knows because all I know is that I wish had a beastwoman as a girlfriend.

Ok last one now and it’s “Nozomanu Fushi No Boukensha” and I’m cheating a bit here. I have only covered the ones where the protagonist was reborn/summoned into a fantasy setting so let’s one where it begins in a fantasy setting. The story starts with Lento who has been a bronze level scrub of an adventurer for the last years but after stumbling upon a dragon who instant kills him, he becomes a skeleton. Given the power to evolve as he kills, he starts his life anew. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know why I enjoyed this one. Maybe it’s the fact that we are following a guy who started weak but now has a chance to become stronger. You know, it’s a very basic underdog set up with a now rather ugly protagonist and I respect making the protagonist ugly on purpose. It’s very common now to have the MC being attractive in one way or another but they then made him a ghoul in the latest chapters but something tells me he will return to his human form sooner than later. It only has the six chapters but I would still recommend following it.

I know, I should be doing proper manga reviews but recently. I been in bit of a slump. I might have some more manga reviews rolling out soon but I do know that next week is a game review for sure which recently got a sequel so I’m going to ride that hype train for a bit. If you want a promise of a proper manga review, I can possibly promise a Attack On Titan review but it might end up being scrapped like my Naruto review. I don’t like saying redundant things and talking about AoT seems redundant so don’t hold me by my word. If you want my other content, links in the sidebar to my YouTube channel and my steam profile if you want to stalk me.

Ant-Man And The Wasp: The Marvel Standard

I know, it’s been like over a month since the last talked about anything weeb related but I think you can bare with it for one more week because I’m going to be talking about a Marvel movie. So at time of writing this intro, I have just walked out of the cinema for my screening of the latest Marvel movie and while I would love to watch the new Mamamia movie, I decided I should watch this because I know anything I would say about the new Mamamia movie would be incredibly bias. Nevertheless, I felt like you would prefer if I was to try to address my standing on Marvel with the perspective of this new movie and trust me, there is one scene in this whole movie that just ruins it for me but we will get there. Also, this will have massive spoilers for both this movie and also Infinity Wars and also before you get your accusation pointing fingers ready, NO I AM NOT A DC FANBOY. I AM JUST A GUY WHO HAPPENS TO LIKE WATCH MOVIES WHO WANTS TO TALK ABOUT THIS MOVIE I WATCHED. With that out of the way, let’s talk about this piece of standardised crap. For those who don’t want those spoilers by the way and still want my opinion. I will say it’s decent but it shouldn’t be a must watch so watch it when it’s most convient for you to so and also, don’t watch the end credit scene.

The plot begins off with where Scott Lang was last time we saw him in Civil War… sort of. Instead of being in the RAFT, he is now under house arrest and being montiered by the FBI. After he has a weird dream which only happens to advance the plot and it only occurs because of the climax in the original Ant-Man movie, he then tries to contact Hank and Hope who are on the run because of Scott’s stupid decision to help the cap in Civil War. Hope kidnaps him and takes him to Hank’s new lab where he is working a portal of some sort so he can go and save his wife. While they try to build this portal thingy, they have to dodge the FBI, a ghost like person and a black arms dealer who wants the lab so he can sell it and it goes on from there until the wife is saved and everyone is either happy, bamboozled or caught. I’m going to say this off the bat but I like how the MCU has consequences to what happens in previous films. It’s not in its own little universe, it’s apart of a connected universe and I find it enjoyable. With that said, I feel like this is a multi-million dollar excuse stretched into a nearly two hour movie to show us why Ant-Man won’t be even near the MCU for a while.

This really kind of bothers me in the way they did it so I’ll save that for last but I want to bring up the theme of the movie because it feels like a MCU movie and I don’t enjoy it because of it. See for me, the most enjoyable MCU films are the ones that don’t feel like one. For example, my preferred MCU movies are The Winter Soldier, Ragnarock and Iron Man 3 and it’s because they aren’t superhero movies. Sure, they have superheroes in it but it tells a different story like in the case of Ragnarock, it’s a 80s buddy cop film but with Thor and Hulk filling in the roles. Iron Man 3 was more of a character piece on the character of Tony Stark and Winter Soldier was a spy thriller and that’s what I like. To me, this Ant-Man movie is simply like every other MCU movie which is a superhero movie with comedy and this is on top of how disposable the movie feels. This movie can just be completely skipped due to the fact that he does nothing to contribute to the current status of the MCU since this is all pre-Infinity War (excluding the end credit scene) and nothing really important that will contribute to future films (again, excluding the end credit scene). And you know what, I would of gave this a little more credit if the comedy was actually funny. I found nothing about this movie entertaining or funny which is weird because I usually would laugh at one joke in these movie but nope, I wasn’t even close to being mildly entertained because it was very cliche in places and it tried to use the same old MCU type of humour of subversion and wisecracks. I feel like this movie would be much better if they tried a different kind of humour for once. That’s about all the complaints I have for the story aspect (I’m saving the big one) so let’s talk about the more technical side of things.

Yeah, I know I’m wasting my time here but I need to pad out the review so just bare with me here. The CGI is of excellent quality as of expected by Disney. I mean, they threw around 30 Million at this throwaway movie because Infinity Wars made them an easy 2 billion and that was before the movie was released on DVD. These MCU movies are an easy way to generate cash for them now so they can easily throw a decent movie with a rather large budget because they know it’s going to make double the budget by the end of its run. There was some impressive fights as well like the intro fight for the Wasp was cool and showed how to do interesting fights. The ghost looked impressive but I kind of wished they had made her work more like shroggender’s cat so she can be all about the probability and not being made of unstable particles. You ask me, I think all the actors were kind of reeling it in at times. To its credit, it wasn’t all the time but I do feel like there was some quite stall moments from side characters and the “romantic bonding” scenes between Scott and Hope was also quite stalled and forced in my opinion. Apart from that, everything else is either decent or not worth talking about it so let’s move onto my biggest complaint and yes, I will be spoiling everything about it.

I hope this complaint I have can help provide my perspective on the MCU and how I feel about it because it’s scenes like this that ruin the MCU for me (including everything else I have mentioned before). The scene starts with the whole Pym family helping Scott shrink himself down via the now portable portal so they can particles to help out the ghost. Soon as he is done, he calls for them to reel him back up but they can’t because they have turned to ashes. Guess what I hate about this scene? Now really, try to guess why I hate this scene in the comments before you read on. I will wait. You done? Well I hate the part when they “kill” the whole Pym family and leaving Scott in that weird acid trip place. It’s not because I am invested in the characters and it’s only partially the fact Ant-Man is stranded there. For me, they have killed off the only reason why this whole movie happened. Remember, this film was about saving Hope who was the original Wasp before she got stuck somewhere. They “killed” Hope off 10 minutes after we saved her and we don’t know if it’s proper dead or not because Spider-Man got “killed” at the end of the Avengers and we know he is coming back after part 2 of Infinity Wars so who knows. This is when I start hating the idea of a shared universe. While as I have said earlier in this review, the shared universe does let there be knockback effects from earlier films affect the newer ones, it also just messes with the story like this did. How are we supposed to believe they are dead when we know their characters are going to come back and how are we supposed to believe that Scott is stuck there now EVEN THOUGH HE IS GOING TO BE IN THE NEXT AVENGERS FILM! It’s stuff like this which bothers me about the MCU because it’s stuff like this that removes all the tension and mystery in the MCU for me. It’s like they want their audience to both know what is the MCU but also be blind to that MCU at the same time so everything in their little universe works and you don’t have it both ways. Maybe if they kept it more close to their chests about future characters and sequels it could work but the fact they are so open with sequels before we have even seen the movie that comes before that is what kills it. That’s the silver bullet in the head for this whole universe gimmick.

I can continue with the rant but I know it would go on and on so I’m going to cut myself here. Should you watch this movie? Sure if you care about the MCU but it’s a solid 5/10 for me. It’s passable and that’s all it is. If you do watch it, don’t stick around for the end credit scene unless you want the whole universe ruined for you. Next week might be a game review or that manga review. I don’t know and I don’t care in what order they come out in. As long as I can post something next week, we should be fine. As per usual, links in the side bar to all the other stuff I offer as well as my steam profile for those who want to spam me with crap trade offers.