Tarzan II (2005)

Tarzan II is the third film in the Tarzan series and unlike Tarzan & Jane, it isn't a mashed together several TV episodes.  Instead, it is set as a prequel and shows off Tarzan when he was still young.  Being the only human in a group of gorillas is tough, doubly so when he doesn't know what he is.  This film tells the story of him discovering himself and finding his place among the gorillas despite being different.  The story starts off being okay, but it eventually becomes quite average with a cast of boring characters and a lack of chemistry and charm.  Tarzan himself is a fun a character but the villains are completely one-note with a singular personality trait that defines them.  The plot is typical of the fact that Tarzan stays away from his family, finds mentor and learns a valuable lesson.  As a result, by the time the halfway point comes, you might very well lose interest.  The animation is solid though and the use of 3D in the panning shots were done well.

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz! (2015)

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz! is the third season that is based on the manga series. It is a spin-off from the Fate franchise and the season is ten episodes long. The key gimmick to this anime is that Illya is a magical girl, although as the seasons went on, it pivoted to more of a slice-of-life anime with magical girl elements on the side from time to time. The season starts right after the previous one where the characters were planning for a day out at the beach to celebrate Illya, Miyu and Kuro’s birthdays. They are all coincidentally on the same time, which raises some suspicions. The first half of the season is completely slice-of-life, with only several cursory mentions to the mysterious eighth class card that had been discovered.

Unfortunately, despite Bazett being such a big threat in the last season, since she was able to singlehandedly defeat Luvia, Rin, Miyu, Kuro and Illya, it’s a shame that she becomes such a joke when she makes her first appearance here. It’s such a big mood whiplast moment and while funny, it just feels that there are no serious characters left in the anime when you see Bazett become the butt of a joke again and again. Due to Kuro’s nature and how she has to constantly refill her mana from Illya, this gives rise to a lot of Kuro on Illya scenes, as well as Kuro on Miyu scenes. The fan service continues to be quite frequent and pushing the boundaries quite a bit considering the elementary age of the characters. It’s also used for humorous reasons with characters accidentally seeing what happened and then misunderstanding due to the lack of context.

On the other hand, Shirou continues to add to his harem. It’s extremely over the top and clichéd when all these characters are fawning over him. He still acts like a typical clueless and overly nice protagonist, which makes it all the worse. Going along with this is the running gag of Luvia and Rin randomly turning up wherever Illya is. The humor can be highly exaggerated at times, with the characters flailing around. Although Illya’s constant overstated reactions and remarks are usually great for a laugh.

Continuing what was started in the previous season, Illya’s school friends get more and more screen time. They go to the beach, the theme park, and festivals. We encounter their families, we learn about their hobbies and what they like. You might be surprised at what you find out and at times, it does feel this aspect of the anime tears too far away from Illya, Kuro and Miyu’s world.

It takes half a season of day to day normal events before the characters start to deal with the eighth class card. Even then, it takes a whole episode of talking and reflection before the ball gets rolling. Illya’s mother reveals a bit more about the Holy Grail War in this universe whether it relates to the class cards that Illay had been collection. It’s nothing mindblowing but gives context on her background and what her husband Kiritsugu is doing.

The way the episodes were structured means that this can be another slow season since there is not enough happening to fill all that time. Yes, there are certain scenes which are great, but a lot in between drags. When the exciting stuff happens in the second half of the season, it doesn’t feel like it was worth the wait since there was hardly any build up. All told though, the true nature of the eighth class card was a surprise and a neat reference too in terms of whom it was. It’s notable that Fate/kaleid takes that reference and produces its own version of the character with its own twist.

The season finale pretty much blows open all the mysteries so far and leaves nothing major unanswered. We learn about Miyu, we learn about the Holy Grail War and several characters’ roles in it, and we learn about the school nurse’s identity after all that teasing. Illya shows off an amazing power up to defeat the season’s villain (who is sadly underdeveloped) and it ends with a fuzzy image of two characters, promising their appearance in the next season.

Overall, Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz! is between the first and second seasons in terms of quality. It suffers from a slow pace and aimless direction in the first half. By pushing a block of slice-of-life and then a block of magical girl action, it wasn’t the best way to space the season. The slice-of-life part felt too slow despite some good humor, and the magical girl action felt like it didn’t get a proper build up. It would have been better if the writers could have meshed them together a bit more evenly instead of discrete elements like the way it is now.

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Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory (PS4)

While Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory is a sequel to the first Cyber Sleuth, the story takes place concurrently with the events of that game. It follows another protagonist, Keisuke, who is trying to track down the hacker that stole his EDEN account. EDEN is like a virtual world that’s crucial for everyday life now and your EDEN account is effectively your identity. Keisuke joins a hacker group known as Hudie and finds out about digital monsters, or Digimon for short.

The Digimon collection aspect is the biggest and most addictive feature of the game. There are heaps of Digimon to choose from. “Capturing” a Digimon is as simple as encountering them enough times so that you can 100% scan them (usually takes 5-20 encounters). There are multiple digivolving paths to each Digimon, which is differentiated by their different stat requirements. You can freely de-digivolve too, which is useful in playing around with the skills that you want your Digimon to learn and inherit. Digivolving and de-digivolving resets their levels to 1 but it’s not as bad as it sounds since later on, completing one battle with them in your reserve will shoot them up 20-40 levels in one hit.

The game has a turn based battle system which is fairly generic as these systems go. You have an active party of three, followed by eight reserve slots. Each turn, your Digimon can attack or use a skill, use items or swap Digimon with one from your reserve slots. Each turn, there is a chance that the subsequent turn’s Digimon will join in for a more powerful attack.

There are two attribute systems that combine together. The first is that all Digimon is categorized as Vaccine, Virus or Data, and each one is strong against one while weak against another. The second attribute are elemental such as fire, water, light, dark etc. When combined with the distinction of each attack being physical and magical, and it can be fairly varied when determining the attack multiplier that gets applied based on the strengths and weaknesses of a Digimon’s type.

The game takes place mostly in EDEN, the digital virtual world. Unfortunately, the dungeons are very generic and if you’ve played the first game, everything feels very similar if not identical. The environments are blue floating platforms and the game has random encounters. Thankfully, the encounter rate is very low so you’ll be able to walk a decent distance before getting into battle if you don’t like them breaking the flow of the game. Later on, you’ll get abilities to remove encounters altogether. The environments of the real world look great too. Just like the dungeons though, the camera angle is fixed and there’s no way to move the camera yourself at all.

The first game’s story wasn’t that great and so having this game as a side story, with the same events from another perspective while adding its own thing, isn’t ideal either. It is boring and even ten hours in, you don’t feel that the story is picking up at all (it never does). Furthermore, you probably need to have remembered the original in order to understand several things. This translates to the game progression. There are very mundane events and sidequests. It doesn’t help with the limited objective markers at times. There is a lot of filler content and quests even in the main storyline, so that it’s quite dry before you even hit the halfway point.

There is a big design flaw in how you have to constantly go into a menu to access the dungeons and story quests. It just adds unnecessary steps and animation. It’s even worse when you accept a story quest, kicks you out of the menu, only for you to enter it again to access the required dungeon.

The game restricts you from grinding up a powerful party by artificially giving you a limit on how many Digimon you can carry based on a points weighting system. Weaker Digimon like Rookies have a lower weighting compared to stronger ones like Ultimates. It’s quite annoying when you’re juggling your party early on. There are some annoying difficulty spikes where you have to fight an enemy that has a ton of HP, high defenses and no weaknesses. It’s completely at odds with the normal encounters. This goes for bosses as well, it’s just really inconsistent.

This was a flaw in the first game and it’s a flaw here. In the second half of the game, the bosses become huge HP sinks, which makes the battles drag on and on. You then have to rely heavily on penetrating attacks and weaknesses. There are some battles in which the enemies constantly heal, which is always annoying and frustrating.

The ending is also a bit disappointing and falls flat like the rest of the boring dragged out story. You simply don’t care much by that point and the final boss isn’t that great either. It just feels under-cooked, especially compared to the first game, which already wasn’t amazing either. There is a post-game dungeon but disappointingly, it takes the lazy route and reuses the same dungeons in the story. It takes around 30-40 hours to finish the story, so it’s a long game.

Overall, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory can be a fun game, if only for the digivolving aspect. Being allowed the freedom to digivolve up and down the chain, with so many possibilities, can be very addictive. Add in the min and maxing of your Digimon’s stats, and recognizing the Digimons from the anime, and it’s great. Unfortunately, the story is terrible with horrendous pacing filled with mundane and pointless filler, dragging the whole game down. It also suffers from extreme reuse of the same things from the first game.

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Toy Review: Transformers Cyberverse Hammerbyte (Warrior)

Review:  #695

Name:  Hammerbyte

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Autobot

Line:  Cyberverse

Year of Release:  2020

Size Class:  Warrior (Wave 7)

Mold Status:  new

BEAST MODE:

Hammerbyte transforms into a robotic shark, and with this type of alt mode, you would have expected a Decepticon, instead, he is an Autobot.

Despite being in the Warrior class (a class that is focused on simplicity and cheapness), Hammerbyte is pretty good.  He looks solid from all angles

He lies flat on the table and there's no play value here, he basically just looks cool.

He is a hammerhead shark, hence the name, and the jaw can open and close.

In terms of size, Hammerbyte is roughly Deluxe sized, but feels slightly lighter.

This is a solid alternate mode, the darker metallic-ish looking blue mixed with baby blue works really well as a color scheme.

TRANSFORMATION:

It's simple, but it works well, to the point where it's fun and fast converting between the two modes.  The back, along with panels of the shark's sides, split to form his robot legs.  Then the arms come out from the side, fold the upper torso down and you're done.

ROBOT MODE:

Surprisingly for a Warrior in the Cyberverse line, Hammerbyte does not really have many compromises and he looks pretty good in robot mode as well.

He carries the shark head on his back, although there is a really for this which we'll get to later.

The head sculpt is decent, and the trident looking crown on his head does invoke his aquatic nature.

Again, he's roughly Deluxe sized, but naturally, he's a lot more hollow.  The Warrior size class has always been overly aggressive with the cost cutting, and there are significant hollowed out parts here, to the point where it is so obvious and ruins the look.

For articulation, and once again contrary to what you'd expect of the Warrior class, Hammerbyte has a good range.  He has joints for his head, shoulders, elbows, hips and knees.

He really only have single hinges and balljoints though, he noticeably lacks thigh swivels, and his feet are angled such that they can lay flat on the surface in a normal A-pose.

The gimmick here, and this is really cool and unobtrusive, is by pulling down on his left shoulder, the shark head on his back springs up to cover his robot head, so now he's a robot with a shark head!

This is such a simple but fun gimmick, it's extraordinary cool and satisfying.  And again, it does not compromise the figure in any way except maybe sometimes you'll accidentally trigger it when posing him.

A decent robot mode with a cool gimmick.

OVERALL:

Hammerbyte is one of those rare Warrior class figures that's actually worth buying.  Yes, he is still cheap and light, but he's got two good modes, and the shark head gimmick in robot mode is extremely cool.

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Tarzan & Jane (2002)

Tarzan & Jane is a sequel to the first Disney film but since it was a direct-to-video release, the quality is definitely not as high.  In fact, it has an extremely similar structure to most of Disney's direct-to-video films, and is pretty much three TV episodes merged together to make it feature length.  There is the weak excuse of Jane thinking of doing something special for her anniversary with Tarzan, and this causes her to reminiscent about past events.  We then get three effectively self-contained stories where Jane's past life affects Tarzan's.  For all its worth, Jane and Tarzan are happy with their lives, but every so often, Jane does want some "civilized" activities.  Naturally, when you try to have tea parties in a dangerous jungle, it is not the best idea.  If you enjoy the TV series then this film is a natural extension and you'll enjoy it.  Otherwise, the animation is average (not great, but not bad either) and the writing is simplistic but it does touch on some deeper themes like compromising and not forcing things onto someone you love that they don't like.

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei! (2014)

Fate/kaleid line Prisma Illya 2wei! is the second season based upon the manga series, which itself is a spin-off from the Fate franchise. It is ten episodes long with an OVA released afterwards. It takes place two weeks after the first season. Illya and Miyu are living happy normal-ish lives. They are enjoying time with their group of friends. However, Rin and Luvia, their mentors, return, having now settled in Japan. They are tasked to help the ley lines recover. The only reason they captured the cards in the first season in the first place was to reduce the damage they were causing to the ley lines, so it can feel like a flimsy excuse just to have the characters stick together.

The majority of the season focuses on the new character Kuro. Her background is mysterious since she basically just appeared in an episode. She seems to have a grudge against Illya and is quite powerful to boot. You have your suspicions on her true nature since it doesn’t feel like it would be anything too mind-blowing. The class cards from the first season are out of focus, and by extension, the heroic spirits are largely out of sight as well. As a result, the anime turns into more of a slice-of-life affair, further carving out its own identity away from the other Fate spin-offs.

Something that was noticeable is that the season increased the amount of fan service. Not only are the camera angles more suggestive, as well as the longer length of time it lingers on certain places, but it constantly teases Illya with Miyu in the beginning, and later on Kuro with basically everyone else. It goes to the point where there are kissing scenes which feels weird considering the ages of these characters and the aesthetics of the anime. There are whole episodes dedicated to what you would expect are purely for fan service, such as a whole episode dedicated to characters going to the bath.

The story keeps swapping between the casual slice-of-life (which is the overwhelming majority of the season to be honest), and the more serious matters involving magic. It does give it variety and keeps it interesting as a result. It takes a very idealistic approach in resolving problems such that it results in the best possible outcome. There are a lot of commentary about friendship and family so it can feel overly positive at times. Midway through the season, it surprisingly throws in several threads which ties it to the Fate universe, with mentions of this universe’s version of the Holy Grail War.

One annoying fact is how Shirou has somehow become a typical harem protagonist. Effectively all the main female characters have fallen for him. Some stereotypical shtick will constantly happen which is extremely cliched. He gets a surprising amount of focus and screentime, especially compared to the first season. Considering how this version of Shirou is pretty much a blank slate, it makes the character even more annoying and shallow than usual. If you were wondering about the person that showed up at the teaser of the first season’s finale and whether they’d show up or not, they do... eventually. Although whether they form an important part of the story is another matter.

As if to make up for the rest of the season, the finale ramps up the magical aspect, including plenty of action, which was already pretty decent and fun to watch. There are a couple of times where there is a rare good usage of 3D with the camera revolving around the participants of a fight. It added a highly fluid and dynamic feel to the scene. Illya and Miyu shows off the potential of the cards and brings to the forefront their excellent teamwork with Kuro. Having the cards be the focus again feels novel after being neglected for most of the season. It leaves a cliffhanger that is the perfect setup for the next season.

The OVA is a hot spring episode and is pretty much there purely for the additional fan service if you hadn’t gotten enough over the course of the season. It’s an excuse plot and nothing significant happens, although it can be funny at times. That being said, it went too far considering that the main characters are around ten years old.

Overall, while Fate/kaleid Prisma Illya 2wei! still needs to tweak the balance between the slice-of-life aspect and the magical girl aspect, this is an improvement to the first season. It’s fun to watch and the character interactions gives it a lot of energy. The introduction of Kuro was a bit cliched at times, not to mention it’s quite annoying to see everyone fighting for Shirou’s affections, but otherwise, this is an enjoyable season.

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Fantasy Life (3DS)

Fantasy Life is an action RPG developed by Level-5. The key gimmick to this game is the twelve different classes that you can pick, which are referred to as Lives. While you have to pick a life upon starting the game, you can change your Life any time afterwards and still be able to keep the skills that you have learnt. Therefore, you can chop wood or mine even while as a Paladin, or cook while as a Blacksmith. The game is set in the world of Reveria. As the character, you start off in the city of Castele, which is actually of a fairly large size that spreads over multiple screens. This is because here is a building for each of the Life classes that act as headquarters, as well as a bunch of shops. Furthermore, you start off living in the attic of a house but are able to move into larger buildings and decorate them with items. The game has colorful graphics and although there is a 3D effect, it’s not very strong or impressive compared to other games.

The story has you waking up on the day that you have to select your Life. You meet a talking butterfly along the way, named Flutter, and together you end up investigating the Doom Stones that has been falling down on Reveria. This will naturally spiral off into its own chain of events that carry you along for the ride. The story is very structured in that you’ll complete a bunch of quests that introduce you to the new area, and then you’re sent off to the next place to find treasures that’ll help with the Doom Stone issue. It never gets that intense or complicated, which makes it a casual easy game. The combat in the game is really simple since it’s pretty much mashing a button to hit enemies. Holding down the button will allow you to execute learnt skills, including special attacks. You may also block if you equip a shield. Since it is real time combat, you can run around and kite stronger monsters to slowly chip them down. The game encourages exploration at your own pace with big open areas filled with enemies and stuff to pick up. The game has a lot of unique items that you can gather, sell and use to fulfill quests. Enemies will respawn whenever you change areas, which can be a bit annoying, especially in the unique dungeons. These dungeons usually hold decent treasure as well as stronger bounty monsters.

The key draw here are the multiple Lives and the tons of fetch quests that accompany them, which is better than it sounds. There are three main sets of quests in the game: one is for the main story, one is related to your Life class, and the third one relates to random quests from the townspeople. These will all involve either killing a number of monsters or obtaining a number of items. Completing the ones for the story will increase your Bliss Level which unlocks nice perks such as extra bag space, while completing the ones related to your Life class will increase stats that helps that Life. Once you’ve picked your life at the beginning of the game, you’ll play through the introductory quest. Afterwards though, you’re free to change Life at any time with no penalties. This is great if you wanted to check out one of the other Life classes, especially since you can use their abilities for any Life later on. However, this also means that the game is easy on the whole since it is designed to be able to be completed no matter what Life you choose, even if you choose a non-combat Life.

There is a quick travel system that requires in-game money to use. This isn’t too bad but money is a bit harder to come by, especially if you want to buy a bigger house for your character to stay in or if you want to keep up to date with equipment. Travelling back home is easy and free, it’s travelling to other cities or areas that are more cumbersome as you need to go to designated points and pay in-game money. Eventually, you’ll be able to add up to two NPCs to your party and assist you in fighting. They automatically leave the party during story quests as those have their own party members that join. To form your party, you have to find the character (who are always in their same spot) and then manually add them, which is cumbersome.

Combat-wise, the ending is going to disappoint. However, story-wise, and the game gets pretty good in the last few chapters as the big fetch quest finally comes to an end and you learn a few things about this world. It’s interesting and holds a lot of potential, but doesn’t go far enough to fulfill that potential. There’s quite a bit of post-game left, including harder dungeons, as well as all the other dungeons you were forced to skip earlier on due to the powerful monsters. That isn’t to mention checking out all the other Lives and their mini-games and short sub-stories. Completing the story only takes around 10-15 hours, but it’s all the other optional things you can do that will rack up the time.

Overall, Fantasy Life is a fun game where you can chill and yet still make a lot of progress. It’s the perfect balance of a more casual action RPG, but has enough going for it to still be addictive. The various Lives are a unique idea, although since the game is designed that any Life can beat it, you might end up only trying out a few once or twice before going back to your favorite one. The story and game has a slow beginning, but picks up from around midway. Even though it’s a gigantic fetch quest, it is interesting enough, and the characters and visuals are charming enough, to take you through the time it takes to beat the story.

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Toy Review: Transformers Generations Shattered Glass Collection Blurr (Deluxe)

Review:  #694

Name:  Blurr

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Autobot

Line:  Generations - Shattered Class Collection

Year of Release:  2021

Size Class:  Deluxe

Mold Status:  remold of Studio Series 86 Blurr

PACKAGING:

As part of the Shattered Glass Collection, a set of exclusives, Blurr comes in a fancier box than normal.

It's also shaped oddly too, no idea why the sides are sloped more than usual as it makes the packaging easier to be crushed during postage (which is exactly what happened to my copy).

VEHICLE MODE:

Using the mold that was based on the appearance of regular Blurr in the 1986 movie, SG Blurr transforms into a black and dark blue hovercraft.

This is a pretty good mode overall, although there are no plastic wheels underneath.  He cannot roll on the table, only lay flat on top of it, which kills what limited play value he could have had.

The robot weapon can peg underneath the front.  Of note are the lightning paint applications on the front, a bit cheesy, but also suits the evil Autobot theme.

In terms of size, above is a comparison against TLK Bumblebee.  Blurr isn't too bad.

There is an open cockpit with limited detail inside.  Otherwise, this is a solid vehicle mode for what it is.

TRANSFORMATION:

It's quite easy and actually very reminiscent of the Titans Return figure, but it is a completely new mold and design.  The sides form the arms, while the front folds onto his back.  The rear of the vehicle then unfolds to form the legs, and that's it, kind of too simple at times.

ROBOT MODE:

Blurr's robot mode is where it is at, and the addition baby blue for his thighs helps break up the darker shades

Unfortunately, Blurr has quite a bit of kibble.  The most atrocious are the vehicle fenders behind his arms, which are way too long and big.  The vehicle's front on his back sits flush so that's not a problem.

Blurr is a retool, with this figure getting a new head and this is where the figure is at.  This is a fantastic sculpt, with the black helmet, eyepatch and claw marks beneath s left eye really selling the evil Autobot theme, it's amazing.

For size, above is a comparison against Siege Sideswipe.  Nothing much to say except Blurr is what you'd expect of a Deluxe nowadays.

For articulation, Blurr has joints for his head, shoulders, elbows, waist, hips, knees and ankles.

Even though this is the second use of the mold, there appears to be some mold degradation, or just poor quality control.  In particular, the kibble behind his arms do not peg solidly and tends to detach, which is really annoying.

Blurr comes with two accessories, a welding tool accessory and a gun.

The welding tool just covers up his hand, and it works well enough.  Although the unpainted grey plastic looks kind of bad in person.

His gun on the other hand, looks good and can be held in either hand.

The big pieces of kibble behind each arm does get in the way sometimes, and looks so bad.  It feels really lazy of the designers (but more likely cost-cutting), as having it maybe fold in half once more would have solved this issue.

Despite its flaws, this is still a decent robot mode.

OVERALL:

Shattered Glass Blurr is an awesome figure if only for the concept.  The new head sculpt works amazingly well, and while the mold is okay, this is a worthwhile figure to grab if you don't have the original Studio Series version, or you're a fan of the execution.

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