A review of the Bayonetta: Bloody Fate anime movie
I’m not the best person to be objective about the Bayonetta anime movie, Bloody Fate, or anything to do with the franchise to be honest. The amount of time I spent on the first game was more extensive than any other I have ever played and I was halfway through a ridiculously difficult challenge (a Pure Platinum run) when either through circumstance or willpower I dragged myself away from it. I can’t look at the movie with fresh eyes and comment on the blatant ridiculousness of it all because for better or worse, it has lifted the game’s style, attitude and story directly from the first game.
How about a muscly tattooed guy in shades playing the organ?!
The former two of those points are where the meat of a debate is, the latter though will undoubtedly be the biggest issue for newcomers. The titular Bayonetta is a witch with guns strapped to her high-heels and clothing made out of her own hair who fights against masked angels. Having been awoken from a centuries long slumber without any knowledge of her life before her torpor, she is strangely drawn to the reclusive leader of a religious order while being pursued by the tenacious journalist Luka. That’s the set up, the execution involves a motorcycle chase, a chainsaw three times longer than Bayonetta is tall and a whole lot of incongruous, barely censored nudity.
There will always be something enticing about the portrayal of MMOs within anime. Like .hack//sign before it, Sword Art Online tickles the fancy of those who revel in finding the glitches, the rare objects, the dark and hidden zones of online worlds that subvert the otherwise strongly governed rules and are all but untouched by the masses. For the first half of the series at least, again like .hack//sign, the pesky outside world cannot interfere, for the players of SAO are locked into Aincard by a nefarious programmer. Reach the 100th level and escape the game, if you die you die for real, if you try and take off the gear used to access the game, you die.
Three simple rules, ten thousand players, starting pistol... Go. From there protagonist Kirito, a beta tester and all-round MMO connoisseur, is able to single-handedly charge through what would otherwise take squads, groups, even whole guilds to defeat. A lovely bit of wish-fulfilment intimating that by relying on solitary skill rather communal co-operation a single person is able to succeed and thrive.
Battles have all the subtlety of throwing a super sentai squad and some fireworks into a washing machine and hitting 'spin'
In Accel World's jargon Zero Fill is when, due to lack of willpower, the signal transmitted to an avatar is reduced to zeros only. A fitting analogy for a series which, despite some promising foundations, an unconventional protagonist and a general high level of visual polish, ends up being brainless and largely unfulfilling.
It's not surprising given how exposition and the script in general is delivered like a kudgel to the forehead. Regardless of ongoing events, be that an all out war or impending attack , meticulous explanations as to what is going on are sure to follow. Combined with the protagonist's ostensibly chivalrous but archaically chauvinistic desire to protect the gaggle of women folk who flock around him, it's not long before genre titans like Bleach and Naruto begin to exert their influence.
When beginningUmineko no naku koro ni, it was been difficult to predict that the series would by the end feature no less than six witches, one dragon, one butler, three military bunny girls, seven floating females wearing school uniforms crossed with leotards, and hordes of sharply suited goat-men. Saying that it eases into these bizarre characters with subtle hints and smart progress would be a bare-faced lie - it springs these absurdities without warning or concern for cohesion. This is indicative of the overriding attitude of the show: favouring reckless abandonment of storytelling for twists that often test the limits of patience. Were it not so melodramatically entertaining it would be hard to endure.
The softly spoken, servant loving George is in fact a kung-fu master able to literally kick someone's face off
Starting with a set up familiar to those who experienced 07th Expansion's prior work, Higurashi no naku koro ni, a typhoon has sealed off an island of eighteen members of the Ushiromiya family who are tasked with solving a riddle to earn the family inheritance. The riddle pertains to a Golden Land touted by the mysterious witch Beatrice, who takes a sadistic pleasure in torturing and murdering the family members as the bonds fracture and accusations fly. Initially a murder mystery with occult overtones, when the witch Beatrice finally reveals herself, one of the family members refuses to acknowledge her status as a witch and starts a competition to prove each murder could have been committed by a human rather than magic. The series covers four stories, resetting after each one, and introduce increasingly more characters, both magical and human, as well as a deeper look at the magical world inhabited by Beatrice.
