DragonFreak's Review Thread

DragonFreak

DragonFreak

Everything that drowns me makes me wanna fly!
So, I review everything. Movies, books, entire series, single episodes if they are interesting. The reason for this is: I forget a lot of whatever I've watched/read, and can only sustain the information long enough to read it. I write reviews to remind me of how I viewed it. So I will start posting my reviews on here.
My review style is half summary and half opinion in that order. I don't usually say any sort of spoilers, and if I do, I will specify it.


Anime:
Angel Beats
Black Butler (first season)
Death Note
Martian Successor Nadesico
Pokémon: Origins

Books:
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Inferno Revealed: From Dante to Dan Brown by Deborah and Mark Parker
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Individual Episodes:

Movies:
Catching Fire
Ice Age: Continental Drift

Western Animation:

Video Games:
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team
Wario Land 4

Reviews coming up:
Pokémon BW
Pokémon movie: Extremespeed
 
Angel Beats Series

Everyone in this Anime is dead. Their souls are trapped in some sort of afterlife. The only thing each person has in common is that they all died young and did not fulfill their greatest desires. The only thing the members know of this place, is that a girl named Angel is pure evil. Apparently, anyone who sides with her disappears. Where? No idea, but whatever that place is, it cannot be good. Because of this and blaming God about the injustice in their life, Yuri Nakamura founded the Afterlife Battlefront or the SSS. The members of this group cannot enjoy their afterlife, or they will disappear.
Yuzuru Otonashi is the newest member of the SSS. When he first entered the SSS, Yuri pressured him into joining and convincing that Angel was their enemy. Otonashi wanted to talk to Angel about all this, and she stabbed him in the chest. Luckily in the afterlife no one can die. He agreed to join the SSS.
Yuri hopes that in fighting against Angel and God she will have her revenge for her pity life. And then after that, who knows?

I thought that this anime had a very interesting concept. I always heard that it was very sad, which it was, but more so towards the end, and a few times in the middle. The plot, since it is only 13 episodes, progressed quickly to the point where every five episodes or so, the goal of the anime changes.
The characters of the show, especially Yuri, constantly chides God for what happened to her. Just saying this, if you are a very religious person, it may anger you. Although, having God being an enemy is interesting, but suitable for these kids, who feel like they have lost everything and wound up in a place where there is little hope but the SSS.
There's many character developments throughout the series. Many characters reveal to Otonashi how they died, which reveal things about them that many other methods could not come close to achieve. For being a 13 episode series, the amount of character development impressed me.
I was enthralled from the first to last episode with and very satisfying ending. Also, the opening theme song is very beautiful.
Rating: 8.5/10
 
Ice Age: Continental Drift

This is the 4th installment in the Ice Age series and takes place several years after Dawn of the Dinosaurs. It opens as Scrat, once again, tries to claim a nut. He follows it to the core of the Earth, and causes Pangea to break apart into continents, which provides the problem of the movie to begin.
This movie is centered around Manny and his daughter Peaches, who was born at the end of the last movie. Peaches, in human terms, would be a teenager, or at the very least a pre-teen. Peaches is frustrated but Manny's overprotection, and just wants to have freedom to do whatever she wants.
Much to Manny's horror, they get separated by quickly moving continents, stranded at sea with Diego, Sid, and Sid's grandmother, who was ditched by the rest of their family. Now Manny must get back to Peaches, while trying to survive the cruel ocean and the even crueler band of pirates.

I was glad that they made this movie. I just wanted to see what kind of mammoth Peaches was going to be, which ended being a sort of rebellious one. Figures. Even though the separation of father and daughter made for a great sense of purpose the drives the plot through. And, once again, Sid provides the non-seriousness side of the move. That and his grandmother voiced by Wanda Sykes.
Overall, it was OK. Not as good as the first movie, definitely better than the second, but not even close as good as the third. Although, the 2-4 Odyssey references throughout the movie (depending on how lenient you are) helped how I viewed it.
Rating: 5.5/10
 
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

The narration is told through a man named Jonah. He, at one time, collected information for his book The Day the World Ended, which he was doing for most of the novel. His book was to be about what important Americans did when the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The first people he wanted to interview were the three children of Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the creators of the atomic bomb. Newt was the youngest child and a midget. His mother died giving birth to him. He was the first to contact Jonah. Frank is Dr. Felix's oldest son. He was a an odd child, and the last that was heard of him, he was wanted by the Florida police. Angela effectively became the family's mother, and she kept the family together and working. Jonah travels to their hometown of Illium, New York to learn about the Hoenikkers.
Jonah travels from place to place learning about the Hoenikker's mysterious past, a substance called ice-nine that can freeze anything instantly, and a lie-filed religion called Bokononism, created by a Calypso singer, only known to the citizens of the Republic of San Lorenzo in the Caribbean Sea. All the while realizing what life means.
See the cat? See the cradle?

There's really not a lot that I can say more about this novel. It was definitely an interesting read. The mood is pretty grim and pessimistic. I probably wouldn't have read it if I haven't read a short story of Kurt Vonnegut. I'll recommend it to anyone who is a fan of Vonnegut, or wants to read one of his works.

Rating: 7/10
 
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Charlie Gordon is a grown adult with an IQ of 68. He has tried all his life to become intelligent, working hard in special classes to improve his reading and writing. Because of his motivation, he was selected to undergo surgery to drastically increase his IQ. The operation was successful once, performed on a a mouse named Algernon.
Charlie's operation was also successful, and everyday he grew more intelligent. His reading and writing improved, along with his speech. he found himself doing things he could never imagine like learning numerous languages.
Charlie also realizes as his IQ increases, so does his problems. His personality changes from lovable and kind to arrogant and self-absorbed, and people resent him for it. Memories from his ugly childhood are recalled, causing him grief. Scientists don't refer to him as a human being, but rather as being created by an experiment. Intelligence may be mankind's greatest gift, but that intelligence may lead the Charlie's downfall.

Surgically raising intelligence. This is one of the greatest concepts I've heard in a long time. Just thinking about it leaves me in awe. Think of how it would help the world.
The novel is told through Charlie's progress reports. You can see through his writings the change in his intelligence. In the first sentence in the book is this: "Dr Strauss say I should rite down what I think and remembir and evreything that happins to me from now on." A couple of weeks after the surgery he writes: "I know I shouldn't hang around the college when I'm through at the lab, but seeing the young men and women going back and forth carrying books and hearing them talk about all the things they're learning in their classes excite me." To me, the transition was really cool and added realism to the novel.
Flowers for Algernon is simply amazing. Do yourself a favor and go read it. It's well worth it, and it may change the way you view the world.
Rating: 9.5/10

Mature warning: contains mild sexual content.
 
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov


I, Robot was originally a collection of short stories published separately. These stories were combined and told by the robopsychologist Dr. Susan Calvin. Every robot in the collection are different, with their own purposes and personalities.
All robots must follow three rules:

1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm
2) A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.​

The book starts off with Robbie, a robot bought to be a nursemaid for a young girl. SPD-13 (AKA Speedy) has disappeared from a mining site on Mercury. QT1's (Cutie) view of the world is just a little off. Problems occur when the robot DV-5 (Dave) and its six subsidiary robots stop producing ore. RB-34 (Herbie) was created with a error, allowing it to read minds, which causes more problems than anyone could predict. NS-2 (Nestor) was commanded to "get lost", and lost it became, as it had fled to camouflage itself with dozens of identical robots. The child-behaving "The Brain" tries to find error in other's work with the most interesting results. A man named Stephen Byerley runs for mayor of an American city, but is instantly accused of being a robot, leading to the entire political campaign on doubt on his humanity. Lastly, powerful machines that runs the Earth's economy have "glitches" to could possibly do harm.

Individually, the stories are quite good, but I don't like it how they were assembled in some halfway continuous story. They should've been kept separate. That being said, the plot of each individual story was quite good. Each one had something to do with humanity and variations of situations of the three laws of robots. Which some of them, like the story about Speedy and The Brain, were pretty interesting.

I never seen the movie before, and I particularly don't plan to. I can't imagine it being at all like this book. It was decent, and a nice read.

Rating: 8/10

Reviews coming up:
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team
First season of Black Butler
Pokemon: Origins
Death Note
Professor Layton and the Curious Village (maybe)
Something Wicked This Way Comes

You could say I'm backed up.
 
DragonFreak said:
I never seen the movie before, and I particularly don't plan to. I can't imagine it being at all like this book. It was decent, and a nice read.
Click to expand...

reading the rest of your post, it sounds like there's virtually nothing similar, apart from the 3 laws