Tag Archives: Awful

Tokyo Mew Mew Olé! Review

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It’s time to talk about an absolutely brutal manga that is just awful on so many levels. Man this one was bad and I had a bad feeling about it right from the jump. The original Tokyo Mew Mews may not have been fantastic manga but they at least had a lot of fun moments and cool things happening at all times. This one? It’s trying its very best to be a nonstop reverse harem at all costs while destroying all of the characters in the process. Even having some serious fights was not enough to save this one.

So the plot starts out rather similar to the main series but in reverse. Shibuya is a rather shy guy who keeps to himself. Some think he’s cool in an aloof way while others just think he’s a jerk but he doesn’t care. Unfortunately, a mad scientist (The mother of his crush Anzu) ends up firing off a powerful energy blast that transforms 5 teenage guys into cat warriors. Shibuya is now the leader of this Mew Mew group and he has to try and hide this from the world or he will be a laughing stock.

The only way to get rid of these powers is to find a bunch of “Mew Aqua” crystals. Along the way he will also have to fight off powerful Chimera monsters and a villain group led by Deep Blue who seem to want to destroy the planet. Along the way Shibuya must now try to confess his feelings for Anzu. The tough part is that the other 4 guys are in love with her as well and the same is true for the 3 big villains. Anzu loves the attention from the 8 guys but the problem is that she is slowly falling for all of them as well. Can she choose…must she choose? She will have to handle this carefully.

The original Mew Mew series was a classy affair. The cat gimmick may have been a bit much but hey it was a classic magical girl show about fighting monsters. You had a wholesome romance with the nice guy and the “bad boy” trying his best to get the lead’s attention. The romance itself may have been super weak but the show as a whole was just classic. This series just feels desperate right off the jump. The whole series is about getting in as much shipping as possible and it’s absolutely nonstop.

The plot even curves around this for no reason. Let me give you an example here real quick. One aspect of this is how the Mew Mew formula not only turns you into a cat but it also affects your personality this time. Shibuya is forced to yell stuff like “Pleased to be of service”! and every time he tries to gag himself but it’s too late. By the end of the series he stops resisting but apparently it’s something that happens to all of the characters. Part of the transformation is a mental suggestion that forces you to strike up different poses and say crazy catchphrases. This is obviously not serving any point except to try and make the characters as embarrassed as possible. It’s not a good look.

Then there is the romance which is awful. As mentioned in the intro, everybody likes Anzu. They just can’t stop thinking about her and while it’s obvious that she will choose Shibuya in the end, did we need everyone to fall for her like this? It’s just really excessive but the absolute worst part of it is that Anzu gets her own feelings confused as well. If she was just being very stoic about it the whole time or patronizing that would help but when she actually starts to think that she likes the other guys as well then it becomes an issue.

The series could have easily tried to make Anzu better by being decisive but this was just here for the drama. At the end of the day the whole series is just here for a lot of shipping. You even have the guys showing off so much that they all start to be in awe at times. At one point they’re stranded at the desert and have to make some desperate crazy calls. The plot takes a backseat all of the time and so this ends up being a horrible manga. Every single moment is weaker than its original incarnation but not by a little, it’s by a lot. There is no reason to actually read this manga in the end. There’s just no replay value here and it feels like the worst possible way to continue the franchise. I’m glad the original show got a reboot so people can check that out instead.

So as you can see, I didn’t like Anzu as the main heroine. She’s just not decisive enough and gets kidnapped a whole lot. Anzu may have been brave to enter the villain base on her own at one point but she’s captured so effortlessly that it just makes the whole decision look bad. Shibuya is also bad as the main guy because he is way too timid. He also has no control over his cat form so he will suddenly get real serious and possessive, then back to normal. These massive mood swings don’t help his character in the slightest or help you see how Anzu could have fallen for him in the first place.

Yoyogi is the smart member of the group so expect him to be talking down to everyone all the time. It isn’t very impressive though considering that his abilities aren’t even above the others and intelligence barely matters in this series. You either land your attack and destroy the enemy or you don’t. There’s no room for big fancy plans or any of that stuff. This guy’s annoying all the way through and you know he has no shot at the romance either way. While you can’t have a team without a bunch of team members, there doesn’t seem to be much of a point to this guy. There’s nothing interesting or endearing about him.

Ryusei is the youngest one of the group and he’s very headstrong as a result. Usually I like that kind of character but of course it’s more to show him as the naïve character who gets some feelings for Anzu but isn’t able to express himself. He can be really wild in his cat form as well and is often a liability. I think he could have been a decent character if handled right but of course the series was not going to handle anything right like that so it was game over right from the start.

Ayato is the rich member of the group who tries to be the mature guy who keeps everyone in line. Of course that doesn’t prevent him from falling for Anzu as well. He mainly tries to stay out of the race at least so he doesn’t complicate matters but of course it would have been even better if he could have just been a mentor figure. At least he can pull his weight more than some of the other characters and actually seems to understand the stakes. I can give him some reasonable props next to the other characters but wouldn’t say that I liked him much at all.

Finally we have Taichi who is the worst member by far. It’s not even close, the guy whines a lot and is super weak so it gets to his head and he starts to think about the dark side. C’mon now, you can’t be switching up this quickly. It’s a really bad look for him and he never really rebounds from this. It would be extremely difficult for anyone to make a comeback from that because once you’re a traitor then you’ve crossed a line that must not be crossed. Getting back from that is incredibly difficult to the point of being nearly impossible. This guy got off really easy if you ask me.

Then for the 3 Wiseman group: Latte, Chai, and Mocha, none of them were all that good. Latte was another guy obsessed with Anzu the whole time and he wanted her to love him but of course that wasn’t possible. It’s an awful motivation for a character as well. Then you have Chai and Mocha whose motivations were weak enough where they were also ready to quickly jump in and help the heroes out when things got rough. If you were a villain with a lot of convictions then that surely wouldn’t happen right? I like the title since the 3 Wisemen sounds impressive but there’s nothing particularly wise about them.

Additionally, they could have murdered the heroes so many times but kept choosing not to which was a big mistake. They’re so much stronger than the Mew Mew fighters that it’s scary. They would often win in a single blow but just let the heroes live because they can. That certainly came back to bite them later on. Then you have Dark Blue who has no conviction of her own here either.

She wants to effectively reset the world as humans have messed everything up. Okay that’s great but then all it takes is a few words for her to rethink everything? That felt way too fast if you ask me, there was just no compelling points brought up beyond the obvious. So that shouldn’t have been enough to turn Dark Blue. Not at all, it just serves to show us that she really didn’t have much drive before now.

This series probably has the most reverse fanservice I’ve seen in a minute as well. One look at the costumes and you can see how they aren’t practical at all. I’ve always said that a bad costume isn’t necessarily fanservice on its own. It’s all in how the camera zooms in or how the manga panels are meant to draw your attention. Well, here they are obviously meant to be fanservice bait. It’s a little hard to take seriously compared to traditional fanservice but I’ll still dock points in the same way because it’s yet another element that is taking priority over the plot.

When you stop to think about it, there is barely a plot here. None of the characters actively work to remove their powers after the opening chapters. The 3 Wisemen want to change the planet so they send one shot monsters out once in a while but don’t do much about that until the very ending either. Even the whole environmental theme is mostly removed from the original series. The villains own a company where they talk about going green as a front which was interesting but it’s ditched almost immediately. Going more into that could have been interesting but ultimately it didn’t happen. This series just feels like a waste all the way through.

The series works to have a bit of a body count by the end and a lot of emotional scenes but they ring hollow as you don’t like any of the characters by this point. The only consolation I can give the series is that the art was actually fairly good. There is a lot of detail put into each of the pages so I can appreciate that but at the same time a series cannot survive on art alone. A bad story will be just as bad even if the art is excellent. So the fight scenes look good at least but don’t do much to salvage the overall product.

At the end of the day, if the series wanted to be anywhere close to the original then it should have grabbed the stronger elements from the first title and built upon them. For example, the main girls there were all friends by the end and had solid banter. These guys? Well, they’re all jealous of each other because of Anzu so there’s a lot of fighting but it’s more personal and not as bantery like with the old cast. You don’t really have any scenes of the characters getting to know each other and having a good time because they have one track minds. The characters don’t have great development and again there are no big story beats or deeper themes to keep track of. It’s like the series just grabbed the concept but didn’t actually read the original series.

Overall, Tokyo Mew Mew Olé! is a really awful series. The romance here is probably some of the worst that I’ve seen since Black Bird and that one was historically bad. The whole series is really focused on the romance as everyone tries for Anzu but at the end of the day there isn’t any substance here for it. The series tries to bring you back every month with the shipping but it’s just not enough. I mean that’s probably one of the worst ways you can try to promote a series. By the time things get serious in the final chapters it is way too late. This is really a series that never needed to be made. The concept itself isn’t awful automatically of making the guys the magical fighters for a change but it feels like the series never intended to take its own premise seriously and that’s the most disappointing thing here. Definitely skip this series if you can, it’s not worth checking out.

Overall 1/10

Island of Lost Souls Review

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This review is of the edited version as I believe all airings don’t have the original extreme animal violence scene anymore. Still terrible though and it would be hard to make the review any harsher because it’s so bad.

Remember that feeling of falling off of your bike and scraping your knee, only to fall again on that same knee? That’s basically what it’s like to watch this film. It’s one of those films that is so horrific, so terrible, so awful that you won’t be able to find anything good to say about this film. The fact that Britain apparently gave it an X certificate before cutting out some of the incredibly terrible animal violence is quite telling. Even the author of the book didn’t approve of the film. It’s really just filled with terrible animal violence and ultimately there is no point to the story. Even the main poster is terrible. This film really couldn’t do anything right. At least films like this make other bad titles look somewhat competent.

Parker is on a ship heading back home, but he notices that the Captain is being cruel to his animal slaves. He punches the guy, but is thrown overboard. Parker is forced to go to a haunted island where more animals are being cruelly tortured and is held against his will for a while. Parker doesn’t mind for the most part and even gives a pass to the evil doctor. After cheating on his fiancee, Parker starts to realize that this place may be having a bad effect on him so when his friends come to rescue them, he doesn’t bother to warn them of the dangers. On the contrary, he sends an old man off to fight the island’s dozens and dozens of inhabitants on his own. Once Parker is sure that the old man is dead, he heads off with the main heroine and one of the villains to try and escape, but it will likely take one more sacrifice. He’s planned for that though…

This film’s another train wreck in case you couldn’t guess by now. The only decent character here is the Captain and even he isn’t all that smart. Going outside on your own in the middle of the night in enemy territory is just foolish and drinking/eating a lot in an unfamiliar place is not a strategically wise move either. He certainly should have taken a bigger crew with him for such an expedition. He is better than the other characters by default though. Parker wasn’t a likable character for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that he is very quick to cheat on his girl friend. After that, he admits that he didn’t really care much about the animals being tortured and was content to leave the island and not do anything about it. He’s what you would call a coward. He’s worried about what might happen if he stands up for the creatures so he chooses to feign ignorance. While the animals are being experimented on, he goes back to his cabin to read a book. I was waiting for him to get knocked off, but that would only happen if this was a modern horror film. Since it’s retro, everyone else gets to die except for him and the main heroine.

Most films lose some stars and points for having mild animal violence. You can imagine how this film became a 0 instantly with the high degree that is featured here. This film is right up there with Sucker Punch as one of the worst films of all time. As bad as Awake was, this is in a whole different level. It’s not that long at least, but still tries to be as unpleasant as humanly possible. Dr. Moreau has an extremely dark ending to try and compensate for how violent and dark they made him, but it certainly doesn’t win the film back any points. There is even a trope for this kind of thing where a villain will commit some kind of atrocity and then that same atrocity happens to them by the end as a form of karmic justice. In actuality, this vicious cycle just means that the film will have the same dark moment twice and further sink it into the ground.

On the surface, you might find it appealing to see a villain like this meet an incredibly brutal end, but at that point, it is just too much. Simply have the villain die in an explosion or something, no need for him to get tortured just to prove a point. Films like this are just extremely toxic and just plain bad for you. Watching rubbish like this for a while will just give you a sour disposition and you’re better off watching something with actual good themes and light hearted moments. This film opts to be incredibly grim-dark the entire time instead.

Overall, there’s not much more to say about this film. It simply doesn’t have any class and you’ll be doing yourself a favor by skipping out on it. Animal violence shouldn’t be tolerated in any shape or form and the film better not have been using any actual animals for this. The whole thing is just unethical and if H.G. Wells typically writes books of such low quality, then I can safely say that he is extremely overrated. Most big name authors are though so I can’t say I’m very surprised. The summary tipped me off from the start that this was going to be a terrible film. Luckily, I think this is the last 0 star film at the moment, but we still do have some really negative ones coming up so prepare yourself. For every gem, there are 5 old banana’s in the trash can just waiting to be picked up. This was one of those, but at least, now I have a film I can easily mention when someone asks what some of the worst films of all time are.

Overall 0/10

Bunny Lake Is Missing Review

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bunny_lake_is_missing
It’s time to review one of the worst films of all time! At least, one of the worst films that I’ve seen anyway and this is a title that I highly recommend staying away from. It’s essentially a tragedy story with a lot of randomly bad elements thrown in to make the whole situation more tragic even though this is unnecessary. It results in a film that’s less fun than watching yourself lose a Super Smash Bros match 100x in a row.

Ann moves to a new place and decides to drop her daughter off at a local school as she heads home to get everything set up. Unfortunately, her daughter is missing when she gets back there and Ann wonders what could have happened. There is no proof to suggest that she even exists so the police are skeptical as well. Ann will have to find her daughter quickly if she is to get anyone to believe her and that could be tricky in such a big place.

All right, let’s start off with some of the big negatives and work our way down. The first big negative is Ann’s brother, Stephen. See, the film makes it so obvious that he is insane and villainous from some of his first scenes that you will likely have a good idea of who the villain is. Maybe a red herring? No, because you are not meant to suspect him. He’s very over the top in how much he wants to protect Ann and find the daughter, but you know that he’s evil from his actions. He was a terrible character and a really bad addition to the film, which severely hurt its chances from the get go. His final scenes are just even worse and a waste of time here.

The next big negative is that the film introduces another villain for no real reason. The land lord is another criminal who just wants to seduce the people around him and he’s also insane. Again, there’s literally no reason to add him except to give us red herring who’s pure evil. Red Herrings are supposed to be subtle and not just thrown around for the audience to be tricked. The audience is much more clever for that and won’t fall for such tactics. The land lord does nothing but drag the film down even more.

Just to stress how dangerous the daughter’s situation is, the film has background characters make unnecessary comments about it like how they ended up finding another child who had gone missing a while back. These extra details are there to make the film darker and more tragic, but they just make you want to turn off the TV that much sooner. We get that the daughter is missing, but we want the film’s focus to be on finding her, not in explaining why this is so bad. Common sense tells us why she is in danger.

The film is just very distasteful in almost every scene and it’s really hard to watch. The writers wanted this tragedy to be as dark as they could, but what they forgot is that tragedies are automatically dark so you don’t need to keep on throwing in extra details at us. It’s like making an emotional film where you try to throw as many sad events at the main character as you can to make us sympathize with him/her. After a while, it’s simply overkill and makes the film a burden to watch.

These films also rely on some plot hax to keep going like how Bunny was actually abducted from the school. It’s hard to believe that someone could just walk in and grab her. Or that nobody would notice her being taken for that matter. It’s just very dicey, but to be expected as the plot had to happen somehow right? At least the policeman in charge of the operation tried a lot of different tactics to find her, but he seemed to be trying to be too clever for his own good. He was constantly metaphorically stroking his mustache as he kept on exposing Stephen in logical errors of the brother’s story, but he wouldn’t do anything about it. It all seemed like a game to him as he would learn more and more about the case, but not actually do anything. You also know from the start that the police won’t be able to do much so it’s hard to even have any suspense for that plot.

Then, the tragedy elements are focused on for just about the whole film so there’s no time for anything else. The film’s opening 5-10 minutes were decent as Ann punched her way through the crowds (Not literally) and tried to find her daughter, but that’s because the daughter wasn’t actually missing yet. She was, but they didn’t know that so the atmosphere was still calm. It was enjoyable to see the retro school life and Ann definitely had a strong personality. From there, the film just kept trying to hit you in the emotions far too often to be effective.

The climax of the film is probably one of the worst parts of the film. It goes on for way too long and I doubt that many people were watching this film so that they could see a psychotic episode. It just kept on going and going and you would just be waiting for the film to end already. It felt very long from the start all the way to the finish line. This film could easily be compared to Sucker Punch, which is another 0 star film. Both of them are incredibly dark and not enjoyable to watch. Sucker Punch has some action scenes at least, but has darker plot lines so they both end up being relatively equivalent.

Overall, This is the kind of film that you should never watch even if someone paid you too. It’s simply not worth exposing yourself to this title and you should just try to forget it as soon as possible. The terrible characters mixed with the bad climax and unrelenting unnecessary additions just end up transforming what could have been an almost decent film into a legendarily bad one. If you want a film that is fun to watch with plenty of excitement and laughs, just check out Yugioh 3D Bonds Beyond Time. That film is essentially the opposite of this one in just about every way. It has likable characters, a good plot, and an epic climax. If you’re going to watch any film, it should definitely be that one!

Overall 0/10

Black Bird

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Volume 10 Cover
It’s almost been a year since I started this series and I can safely say that it never got better. I’m surprised that it actually lasted to 18 volumes and wasn’t cancelled sooner. This is easily the worst manga series of all time and it would be very hard to actually lose to this one. At least, as far as manga series that I read go. It basically falls into all of the holes and there are no positives to be found. That’s right…there’s really not a single good thing to say about this series, which is why it’s just so awful. I can safely say right from the start, I do not recommend checking out this manga.

Misao is the main character and she lives next door to a powerful demon. He is the tengu and his name is Kyou. Demons are uncannily similar to vampires in this series and they are just as awful. Misao quickly falls for him and then the series is about them getting closer as they destroy the other demons that lurk about. A prophecy says that Misao may die, but that won’t stop our cringe worthy heroes. Let’s see if Misao can survive in an area that is filled with demons.

Man, this series was terrible. Misao is one of those super unrealistic characters as bad event after event happens to her and she decides that it’s still in her best interests to hang out with Kyou. Misao gets threatened, loses her memories, is attacked, almost dies numerous times, but none of that deters her. The fact that Kyou has to hypnotize her parents sometimes so that they don’t find out about the demons doesn’t bother her either. Misao is in this for love and that’s all that she cares about. The main villain kidnaps her more than once and she still believes that he’s a good guy deep down since he’s a demon who is related to Kyou. Really, there is no hope for Misao and I definitely didn’t like her.

Kyou is no better as he suffers from many mood swings. He’ll be nice to Misao one moment and trying to force her to use a spell to knock herself out of time the next. It was for her own good and all that, but Kyou was really doing it for his own goals. Kyou is strong sometimes, but he still gets beaten up by the villains during other moments. One of the volumes that I rented from the library had been read by someone who also didn’t like him as his face was messed with in every panel. It’s just impossible to like this guy.

Black Bird is one of those series that is so awful that it isn’t even a lot of fun to write about how awful is. That’s why this review really won’t be that long. I could go on and on about the negatives, but they’re all just huge errors that were irreversible right from the start. One of the huge parts that made this an instant loss for me is that it’s a total romance. I’m talking Twilight levels here and at the very least, it did help me breeze through the volumes. I was able to finish one of them in about 10 minutes because of how many scenes I would skip.

Unfortunately, the series plays out a lot like Twilight. There is nothing explicit, (No nudity, etc) but those kinds of scenes are definitely not something that I want to see in a manga series and I just skip them all. Hence, why reading each volume proved to be a very short experience. It’s a negative that you can’t really get past and the series was doomed to get a 0 right from one of the first volumes. Maybe even the very first one. It is simply terrible.

There isn’t much fanservice since this is a Shojo series unless you count those scenes in and of themselves. In that case, this one definitely has some of that in it. It’s just adding more fuel to the flame at this point and the series couldn’t get much worse. The main villain is pretty terrible and I never liked any of the characters. They’re all unlikable and do whatever they want when they feel like it. You definitely can’t trust any of the characters here and Misao should have gotten away from the Tengu when she had the chance.

The art isn’t bad, but I can’t really say much for it. The characters don’t all look the same like some other series, but most of the fight scenes are quickly skipped over due to the nature of the series. The art would probably still be the highlight for the series, but that isn’t really saying much considering how bad the rest of it was.

One thing that is also pretty bad is that the series uses the classic blood subplot. Misao’s blood can naturally make the villains stronger so everyone is after her. The blood shenanigans is why I don’t like anything related to vampires so that certainly wasn’t going to make me like any of the characters here. The Tengu all lack will power most of the time and it’s something that they need to work on. They won’t of course, since they’re busy betraying the team and making partnerships with the enemies, but they should move on.

I could talk about each of the characters, but they’re all pretty unlikable so there wouldn’t be much of a purpose now would there? Power level wise, the series is pretty low tier. One character does get a laser blast though and some basic super speed, which helps his case a little. As expected, he is quickly destroyed without really being able to put up a fight. He turned his back and Kyou figured that this would be the quickest way to win. Honor has no place here.

Black Bird forgets the most important part of being a manga and that’s that it is supposed to be entertaining. We never get any resemblance to a good series here and it’s really a dreary story. There is always something to darken the mood and it’s never fun. You could really just call it a tragedy story that most of the characters are not even aware of. The covers were probably a good tip off of this though as they are all pretty bad. This is a series that I will definitely put out of my memory as soon as this review is done. Now, onto the final paragraph!

Overall, Black Bird is really terrible and it’s one of those series that I’ll never even look at again. I would never flip through the pages of any volume because there is no reason too. If I want to re read a series, I’ll check out Megaman NT Warrior for some quality entertainment. This manga is best left forgotten and if you want a fun Shojo series, check out Kitchen Princess or Angelic Layer. (Layer is close enough to a Shojo anyway) Those are series that retain their composure and tend to provide us with some good stories. That’s what we expect when we read a manga so that’s why you’ll want to skip Black Bird. On the bright side, the next manga review should be significantly more positive. (In theory, that will be the Naruto review unless I finish another manga before that)

Overall 0/10