Monster

The extraordinary Monster anime/manga is a really excellent story with all episodes entertaining me until the very end. In fact, I was so impressed and satisfied with Monster that I watched it completely for the second time in a year in the summer of 2006, being the first anime I just had to see again in such a short time. Not just to understand the story, but to remember, relive and feel the very interesting characters of this story once again as well. It is the only other anime out there that has profoundly interested me with all of its details.

Yes, the story is very deep, but as one watches these episodes at a fast pace, with lots of faith and anticipation between every episode and wondering what would happen next, one inevitably would miss or forget some important things or clues in the story happening in Europe, at least for me. This anime, as far as I can tell, has no plotholes throughout it. It does have an open end which I won't spoil. Of course a story can always still be great with plotholes inside of it, but my point now is that everything happening in the story seemed understandable for me.

People getting influenced or manipulated, people showing of their emotions and trusts and beliefs, people's personalities feeling realistic, Monster really shows of a lot of things in people. And because of that, the viewer gets a lot of information through their head when viewing this, and almost everything of that fits somehow together, to make for a great unforgettable story for me personally.

Just because it's a realistic take on serious themes and it's graphics are on a level unlike any other anime I have seen yet doesn't mean that THAT is the sole reason for enjoying it. It is really the story and characters that made this all so great to behold.

Monster is the kind of media that makes it so rewarding on all entertainment levels. I literally found a treasure of an anime and I am absolutely glad to have seen this. It is vastly different from generic anime and I can even recommend this to Crime, Thriller and Drama fans of regular movies, given that they can stand the foreign language and the graphic style. It could very well be filmed into a regular TV series, that's how close Monster is to reality. Don't expect anything over the top to be happening in here.

And Monster is certainly not a walk in the park. There are many disturbing events playing, an example can be seen in the picture below. Victims are common in this story, as the manipulators continue to destroy everyone else around them. And as the main protagonist continues to search for the boy that changed his life, one must wonder how such a mysterious story could possibly end. But I will leave that all for the curious people to find out.

But alas, only the lucky ones will be able to get so compelled by this. And by lucky I mean no offense at all, but merely by the fact how we differ from each other. The pacing is like a regular detective story. There are many anime fans who disliked this because of its pacing, which means that they are used to lots of action happening in traditional series basically.

I'd say definitely give it a chance if story and characters are top priority for you in any kind of media. Monster is not a great introduction to anime in general, but perhaps, once you are ready for a serious attempt at storytelling, then consider this great piece of work.

Time to Go

Regional locking is still going strong even today, knowing that Nintendo has confirmed that its newest handheld the 3DS will also have it. That's unbelievable, really.

In this modern age of internet society, with its never ending growth of technological breakthroughs and innovations, I simply find the idea of regional locking to be outdated. There are several reasons that Nintendo keeps including it, and I can see why, but I believe a better idea will be needed to strike against piracy, hacking and even importing.

I am, as my friends already know for a long time, a supporter of the game industry, and thus I keep buying the latest games I am eager to try. Ironically, that is not the case for movies, like many, many others can tell you also about. But because I do not spend my money anywhere else, I am content with what I am doing.

Here in the Netherlands, it is common to spot kids with DS's in their hands scrolling through menu's created by R4 cartridges, which basically hold a great number of hacked DS games. Obviously bad for Nintendo, and it was easy to do so because the DS is regional free, unlike its successor.

The reason that the 3DS is regional locked like the consoles is not mainly because of piracy, but because the computer has an online service that constantly is active even in sleeping mode, bringing in various updates, information from other 3DS devices and perhaps more activities. Opening the gates then would be very welcoming for hackers looking for a new challenge in security methods.

Another reason for regional lock would have to be profit. The currency of the American Dollar, the Japanese Yen and the European Euro vary, and if we all would suddenly decide to only import games from Japan from now on, the economy would suffer from it.

But see it at a different point of view. What if Nintendo did allow foreign games to work on everyone of their systems? It's interesting to think about the possibility that everyone may, at one point, consider to allow these kind of gathering abilities such as importing and downloading, and I mean in every way then.

I'd say that security should not turn up as regional lock, but rather as something more effective, for all of us. It really is an annoying fact that even though I have a FreeLoader specifically for the Wii, I cannot even no longer play foreign games on it, because of an update that prevents us from doing so. And so, this battle continues. The battle of region exclusive games.

If it were for the gamers, the ones that buy the games in the end no matter how much illegal activities happen, I would say that it is time to go for regional locking, and that Nintendo and other companies using this method should find different ways of keeping the profit, countering the hacking and in the end, continueing the distribution. So that not all of us would be screwed over in this mess.

There is probably more to it than the thoughts I just shared, but I wish that it would go away for once.

The Room

The truth is that I really like writing reviews. In fact, I've got two giant document files stored on my PC. One is dedicated to my gaming history, the other is to my film history. In them, I only review the games I have beaten once (or played enough of, think of a fighting game) and the movies I have watched from the beginning to the end. That's right, even the poor media is included. I might consider putting in unfinished stuff in the files in the future, but as for now that is how I have crafted them.

I definitely would not want to bombard this blog of mine with all of the reviews written at once. Rather, I'd like to include the more interesting reviews from them in here, so that anyone can read my thoughts about them. Now that you know the way in how I review things, let's get started on the next movie I had reviewed last year, which is The Room (2003).

#535

"Thanks to the famous review made by the Nostalgia Critic, I wanted to have a few more laughs about this ridiculous bad movie. Even the credits are funny at the start. Most of the crappy but laughable parts are already taken note of by the reviewer, including unreal sex scenes, unbelievable dialogue, what seems to be a crappy weird drunk voice over on Tommy Wiseau and in overall retarded behavior from just about everyone. The plot and direction go hand in hand as messed up blandness. Feels like a blend of average circumstances and dumb love situations, but then on a level so wooden you wouldn't believe it. The mother and Mark pull out their stupid acts several times, making them look like huge, very huge idiots. The “buying flowers” scene is an amazingly bad and fucked up scene. And for God’s sake why is it called The Room!? Don´t tell me it´s because of the low budget!? More ordinary plain stuff right in front of your face.

Wiseau himself seems to be a mental unstable random laughing moron that had the best lines in the movie. I mean things like “I did not hit her. It’s not true. It’s bullshit! I did not hit her. I DID NOOOOTT. Oh hi Mark.”(don’t forget that facial expression towards the end!), “Go on.” (after Johnny hears Denny saying that he is in love with Lisa) and “Chicken, Peter! You´re just a little chicken! Cheep! Cheep-cheep-cheep-cheep cheeeep! “, he has proven to be a fine man indeed. Not to forget about other quotes as well: “What´s going on here?" (Mark who keeps getting surprised), “Johnny doesn’t drink! “(after Lisa told about Johnny abusing her physically and the mother only acknowledges the drinking part) and “I’m sure I will be fine. “(with breast cancer diagnosed) will forever be memorized into my mind if I would want others to experience The Room as I did.

The football scenes are pathetic, it´s just throwing around. Don´t tell me that it´s their favorite thing to do outside this poor movie. And the scene after the suicide…no fucking way. You officially now are clueless dumb humans to me. And when some random guy comes in at the party to tell Lisa and Mark that what they are doing is wrong it just feels so…out of this world. In any case, The Room is a very special “so bad it´s good“ movie and somehow, sort of, I am glad to have seen it. Dozens of jokes and parodies could be made out of it, that´s for sure. Brickyard Jimmy´s review on IMDB is very amusing ("Johnny's best friend Mark, a man who's job seems to be to wear James Brolin's beard from Amityville Horror, shows up and electrifies the screen with a performance so wooden that it belongs in the lumber section of Home Depot.") and Nostalgia Critic´s video review was great as well.

If you are looking for a genuine "so bad it's good" movie, then you should really check out this new vision on amazing directed cinema. There are uncountable errors towards this title, and best of all, the director, the star himself, acknowledges the greatness of his movie, together with all of the fans. Perhaps a primal roar while inserting the following wishful words during The Room really meant an important message not only inside the movie's world, but to ours as well, as if he rediscovered his irrational weird way of thinking:

“IM FED UP WITH THIS WORLD!" 

 

Rating: 3.0