Huang_Gai

Hale is a normal boy living in a small jungle community with his mother, Weda, and their friends. He does chores, cooks, goes to school, and cares for his mom, who's somewhat of a lush. One night, she comes home with a cute little pink haired girl named Guu, claiming that she's adopted Guu. Hale and her get along fine initially, but the next day, Guu becomes mellow, bitingly cynical, and manipulative (in the most hilarious way possible), constantly putting Hale in situations he'd rather not be in. Did I also mention that she'll eat anything and everything in sight? Like many shows before it, Jungle Wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu, translated to something along the lines of "The Jungle Was Always Nice, then Came Guu," is based around a single character, Guu, and her antics. More accurately, it's about Hale's attempts to control her and keep her weird habits (remember the eating thing?) from being exposed. Guu herself is pretty much a mystery, with no explanation of who she is or where she comes from, she simply becomes a catalyst for everything strange and usually downright hilarious that happens to poor Hale.

However, the other "main" characters of the show are rather well fleshed out, making the show be less of a "Guu-vehicle" and more of a "well-rounded sitcom." Hale himself, being a kid somewhere around the age or 8 or 9, is prone to episodes of melodrama over Guu's actions, but is a goodhearted kid, it's too bad he got stuck with such a psycho. His mom, Weda, is also pretty good-natured, it's too bad she's such a lazy alcoholic. The other characters are fairly two dimensional, one of which is constantly prone to fits of hysterical laughter, or the teacher who is always sleeping, the little girl who has a huge crush on Hale and has a weird melodramatic issue with love, etc etc. However, some of them are just so out there (a nurse of Weda's who has almost a sexual love for her, which includes many, many nosebleeds, as well as severe beatings of her assistant) that one really can't turn their head away.

A lot of the humor is physical slapstick material, usually overanimated to the point of becoming psychotically violent (though in a VERY cartoonish form) and various oddball emotes. It also has a lot of more spoken comedy that ranges from plain silly to subtle to drier than this review. The storyline itself isn't bad, but entirely unnecessary. It's primarily in episodic format, so you can jump in at any time. Honestly, the only reason this review is so dull is that I haven't slept in three days and I haven't seen the show in months, but I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an interesting comedy.

I'm not the hugest Square fan, in fact, I stopped paying attention to them after Final Fantasy VIII. When I heard a Final Fantasy movie was being made back in 1999 or so, I jumped for joy, expecting to see a movie-version of FFVII, which I had been addicted to. Instead I discovered it was a sci-fi flick, and lost all interest. Then I heard that it tanked at the box office and saw even less reason to watch it. About a year ago I heard about Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and immediately thought "Crap, they're gonna disgrace the actual series this time?" To my complete and utter surprise, they didn't. Then I saw some of the screens, and heard a lot about the action, and was expecting a shallow fanboy piece of garbage that was all flash and no substance. Then I actually saw the movie, and I was floored.

The synopsis is already up on the site, so I'm not going to bother. The CGI for the movie is of course jaw-droppingly impressive, making you almost forget that it's all computer-generated. In fact, in a specific scene, the only reason I remembered it WAS CGI was that no human could move as gracefully as the characters were.

The storyline itself is what shocked me the most. Instead of being so arrogant Square-driven ego-trip about how little effort they had to put into plot because Square fans would ogle at the pretty visuals, the storyline is a rather well-written short story that they manage to gracefully and effectively draw out for an hour and a half without boring the viewer. In context of the game (it's pretty much imperative you play the game first, otherwise some of what they talk about won't make sense. Though I do have to commend Square for making an effort to explain the 40+ hour RPG to any newbies in an incredibly concise and well done manner), the storyline is quite solid and really shouldn't make you go ". . . Hey, wait a minute! That's not right!" This is also quite possibly the ONLY movie I've ever seen where the fight scenes don't detract from the plot or the rest of the movie, and are seamlessly inserted with valid reasoning behind them (the only other movie I can think of off the top of my head that accomplishes this is the underrated Unleashed). Not only that, the fight scenes are done WELL. The camera is manipulated to create a rather good blend of distance (used in most Hong Kong flicks to give the audience a full understanding and appreciation of the acrobatics done by the martial artist) and flashy close up (used by Hollywood to give the audience the illusion that the actors are actually trained fighters) shots that give the movie a stylish feel while allowing for some really jaw-dropping visuals.

Even the acting is well-executed. I've always had a problem with CGI in that every now and then (Pixar-excluded) the actor's delivery or tone won't match the character's face actually mouthing the line or will look over-exaggerated, leading to an awkward moment that could kill the mood. Advent Children manages to keep the facial expressions in sync with the acting, not overdoing nor under-doing the range of motion. The voice actors themselves are well-cast, not being over the top (with the exception of Reno, but his character demands it) nor overly subtle. A nice touch that I personally enjoyed was the studio's choice to not make the characters look exactly like their in-game counterparts, with huge anime-style eyes and heads, choosing to go for a more realistic (and with most of the characters, Asian) appearance. While the eyes are still rather large for their heads, they manage to not look freakish and simply give the artists more room to express emotion through them.

A well done and very solid movie. I can't really think of a criticism for it right now, but as I watch the movie again and again, I'll probably notice things about it to critique. I don't believe I can give it a 9 or a 10, because to me, both of those represent the movies that have a powerful effect on society or movie-making in general (see: The Godfather, Shawshank Redemption, the original Star Wars, Princess Mononoke, The Seven Samurai, etc), while Advent Children is probably the most rock solid movie I've seen in a long time, I'm not sure if it belongs among those movies in terms of greatness.