A Review of Fate/Grand Order: Absolute Demonic Front – Babylonia

June 30, 2020June 30, 2020 / thesakurasunrise / Leave a comment

It’s the end of Pride Month and I’ve somehow managed to waste another one not talking about any gay anime. Mostly because my review of Given went up like a week before June, just missing the cutoff. Because I haven’t seen any other gay anime since then, I’ve no choice but to review the second gayest thing: Fate/Grand Order.

Depending on your priorities, or patience, or standards, Fate/Grand Order is either one of the coolest or stupidest things. The highly successful mobile game based on the world created by Kinoko Nasu and Type-Moon is a multi-arc saga almost as dense in itself as the Fate Universe is normally.

An overabundance of adaptations, spanning novels, visual novels, and comics is nothing new. Alternate universes, alternate timelines, slice-of-life comedies, cooking shows – Fate has something for everyone. Much like there is no definitive Ghost in the Shell, there is no definitive Fate (huh, it’s almost poetic when you phrase it that way).

I love the world Kinoko Nasu created. Just read my review of Lord El Melloi II’s Case Files and you can tell how much the universe resonates with me. On the flip side, I’m not the biggest fan of Grand Order. I think it lacks the substance that made other stories like Fate/Stay Night, Zero, or Garden of Sinners so incredible.

The short version: Grand Order, to me, feels like Fate trying to be Doctor Who or some other show about time travel. It indulges in some of the franchise’s less commendable habits all while feeling like a vehicle for fan service. And the biggest surprise… is that I didn’t hate this show.

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A Review of Id: Invaded

June 23, 2020January 27, 2024 / thesakurasunrise / Leave a comment

There’s something about a detective story that just immediately brings up a story’s score for me. Maybe it’s my childhood obsession with Batman or my fondness for men in long coats, or that time a Columbo-looking motherfucker brought my sister and me back home after we walked a little too far from home as kids.

Any story willing to abandon even one ounce of its seriousness for the sake of introducing some grandiose “brilliant detective” immediately earns style points in my book. And this week’s review is of a show that never ceases to hype up the brilliance of its detectives to the point of shameless self-aggrandizement.

Id: Invaded is a sci-fi mystery show from the studio that brought you DRAMAtical Murder and that one Pharrell Williams music video It Girl… I can’t believe I’m privileged enough to get to type that sentence. Having come out at the start of the year, it’s one of several cool-looking shows that lulled us into thinking the year would be “pretty alright.” Getting around to watching it now, I think it’s safe to say I shouldn’t be too disappointed that I didn’t hop on the bandwagon earlier.

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The Best Three Anime on HBO Max

June 16, 2020January 16, 2021 / thesakurasunrise / Leave a comment

HBO Max is the newest and hottest service to make us ponder the costs and benefits of paying for another streaming subscription, and boy I am excited. Not because I plan on buying it myself for the foreseeable future, but because I know a lot of other people will and HBO Max just so happens to have a fair selection of anime.

Not only does it have a library of 21 Studio Ghibli films, including my personal favorite, The Cat Returns, but it also has a hub of select shows from Crunchyroll. 16 shows in total, which seems low considering how expansive their library is, but the selection they have brought over is… rather well-refined.

I’m excited about HBO Max’s anime selection for the same reason people are excited about some of DC’s content being on HBO Max. In the case of DC, many are happy that some of the better DC content recently such as Doom Patrol will possibly get more attention now that it is on a service that stands to be more popular than DC’s service, DC Universe.

Of course, I say this right after DC up and took some of those very same films used to hype up HBO Max off of the service right after it launched. Let’s just pray the same doesn’t happen with HBO’s Crunchyroll library and therefore invalidates this entire post.

Despite that, I’m hoping that this smaller selection of shows will gain traction and popularity. In that same vein, I want to name just a few anime from HBO Max’s selection that I think should be your top priority. I’m only going to name shows that I have watched though, so don’t be mad if I don’t hype up Konosuba like everyone else in the world has.

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I’m on Patreon Now!

June 9, 2020June 9, 2020 / thesakurasunrise / Leave a comment

With the world going the way it is right now, I feel like more than ever, my life is on pause. I’ve graduated from college with a fairly concrete idea of what I want to be but less of an idea where my first step on that path is. Or, at least that’s what I thought.

To be more specific, I’m not sure what the first paid step on my journey is. I’ve been thinking so much about getting a job that I’ve let it distract me from how I’m already doing what I want to do. You just have to look at my bio on twitter or my About Me page to ascertain how crazy I am about being a writer, producer, and critic, both in written and visual media.

So I’m gonna keep doing what I’m doing, and if you like what I do, maybe you can support me…

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Finally Watching Space Dandy in 2020

June 9, 2020 / thesakurasunrise / Leave a comment

…

What the fuck am I doing?

The entirety of Space Dandy came and went in 2014, getting all kinds of buzz for all the right reasons. It was even fairly historical given that it premiered on Adult Swim in America before it even aired in Japan, with the English dub and everything. This was the beginning of the era of simulcasting and simuldubbing This show was a big deal.

Maybe about a year or two later I got the blu-ray of the complete series. And like any rational person who got a Blu-ray of a show, I watched a few episodes and then didn’t finish it until 2020… Seriously what the fu-

With Shinichiro Watanabe as Chief Director and Shingo Natsume as director, Space Dandy was a high-point for Studio Bones that despite the praise seems strangely absent from conversations about classics in the medium in recent years. It has the kind of recognition that assures that it will be referred to fondly, yet I feel like after watching, the expectation greatly differs from the actual product.

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Pondering Attack on Titan’s Final Season

June 2, 2020January 26, 2021 / thesakurasunrise / Leave a comment

At the end of the much-acclaimed third season’s final credits, a fourth and surprisingly final season of Attack on Titan was announced to be greenlit.

We went from waiting years for a second season to getting subsequent sequels at a reasonable pace to the point that now I’m a little shocked that the end of both the manga and anime are syncing up accordingly. However, long-time fans became concerned as soon as it was suggested that Studio WIT would NOT be animating it.

In the wake of the world burning down, we were blessed with quite a climactic trailer for the final season. And the editors wasted no time telling us who would be helming it.