Honey and Clover - Season 2

Honey and Clover's second and final season continues and resolves the various plot lines entangling its various characters, with a focus less on cute comedy and more on trying to wreck you emotionally. It almost feels like a different show. The quality of the animation and writing and character performances is the same, it just simply is no longer concerned with making you laugh. If the humor was all I liked about the first season it would be disappointing, and honestly some of the charm is missing with it being so maudlin all the time, but it's still a high quality series for the most part. You sort of wonder why some characters make the decisions they do, but people carrying feelings that they know will never be returned is sort of what the whole thing is about. There's some pretty depressing moments throughout the 13 episodes, but it still manages to do that anime thing of finding a way to seem positive after the fact. Bittersweet, I guess. The ending definitely has that in spades, and might be one of the most touching conclusions to a story I've ever seen. It's a series that really captures the feeling of unrequited longing, and it's still worth seeing for anyone interested in intelligent entertainment.

Hot Tub Time Machine

You've probably seen a movie like Hot Tub Time Machine before. A comedy that you like the actors in, and has a funny concept, and is actually pretty humorous, but you still feel a little let down by. It's not a bad movie at all - I'd call it pretty good. But I kind of wish it was more. This is a movie about a group of guys who find a hot tub that can travel back in time... and they spend the whole thing stuck in the 80s. A common complaint with comedies is that all the funny parts are in the trailer, and while that's not really true here, I'd like to make a variation on the idea. There are plenty of laughs that are not in the trailer, but all the laughs that are in the trailer are represented in full. What might have been teases for great scenes, like the one with Craig Robinson reluctantly having sex in the bath, are pretty much exactly as they appeared, with nothing extra you didn't know about. It leads to a movie that's funny but not really ever unexpected.

It's obvious after a point that it's really a send up of 80s movies rather than time travel. A few stars of those films appear, like Chevy Chase as the mysterious hot tub repairman and Crispin Glover as a bellhop who's always close to losing an arm. And it's really a typical 80s comedy in a lot of ways, with characters like Lizzy Caplan's Deschanel-esque quirky perfect girl and Sebastian Stan's douche bag alpha male. There's a lot of gross-out bodily function stuff that doesn't really play anymore and of course a Communist paranoia thread that helps lead to the main conflict keeping the good guys from getting back to the present. All of the main guys are pretty good, and the supporting cast is mostly decent even if some of them didn't really sell the 80s so much as someone's vague memories of the 80s. Rob Corddry is the main comedic catalyst, though honestly it seems like he's trying too hard in an attempt at a broader audience. I liked the movie, I just wish it was better. And after hearing about the whole color correction issue, it was impossible not to notice. If you don't know what I'm talking about, google "teal and orange". Lots of movies are limiting themselves to this palette, and it really doesn't work in a movie that's supposed to represent the 80s. It just looks really weird in spots. Even the DVD box art can't escape the madness.

Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory

Chronologically, this is the third OVA that takes place between the original Gundam series and Zeta, which continues the story with another new threat to uh... whoever the good guys are. I'm not going to pretend I know a ton about the Universal Century's backstory. The Zeon guys are colonists who rebel against the Earth government, with the latter portrayed as the protagonists, although they usually make efforts to have at least certain people with Zeon seem sympathetic. Other shows like Gundam Wing take place in very similar but definitely different universes. I haven't really been watching these OVAs because of interest in the overall story though, more of out some weird appreciation for what they do. I definitely prefer the look of modern anime to stuff from the 90s, although sometimes that stuff is fun to see again. What might be most interesting about the whole Gundam series is that despite being about giant robots, it's still relatively hard science fiction, and that stuff is interesting to see on the rare occasions where it's actually filmed or animated.

And it's a series that really doesn't hold your hand. You have to try to follow the various factions and characters to really know what's going on. Stardust Memory takes place a few years after the first big war from this timeline, and a few more years before the next big one, and serves as a bridge between the two conflicts. In addition to its heavy military plot, there's again a love story to humanize it and keep it from getting too sterile. I wasn't a huge fan of the way they handled this one, though. It seemed schizophrenic in its efforts to remain interesting. First they like each other. Then she's a bitch for no reason. Then she treats him like a kid. Then he goes AWOL. It's all just a bit forced. But it gets tied in somewhat interestingly with the main story, resulting in an emotional and seemingly significant ending. It's sort of a foreboding one, although the main characters themselves seem to come out okay. The 13 episodes are a pretty quick and entertaining watch whether you really care about the political and military jargon or just like seeing robots blow each other up. I'm almost interested at this point in checking out the full TV series from the same storyline.

Planet Hulk

This is the last step of my quest to see all of the recent Marvel movies I missed. Although Kick-Ass sort of counts since Icon is a Marvel imprint, and it's out on home video next week. So anyway I mostly enjoyed Planet Hulk. It's based on the storyline that led directly to the World War Hulk comic I read a while ago, although it ends before it gets to the part that triggers that story. Which might have been a good idea, since it would have made a total downer out of what is a pretty complete and interesting story, if you ignore the fact that they turned Hulk's blood green and he's somehow able to stay transformed the entire time without a single appearance by Bruce Banner. I still don't really get that.

But yeah, it's a pretty classic pulpy adventure story. Hulk is sent to outer space by some dudes, and ends up on a planet they didn't expect, one inhabited by several different intelligent species and where he is captured and forced to fight in a gladiatorial arena. They attach him with a device that acts as a universal translator, so he can actually be a character and not just a raging psychopath. He forms an uneasy alliance with some fellow captives (uneasy because Hulk is a dick, always), and eventually they escape in the midst of a rebellion. There's some pretty standard scenes of character development that also explain the backstory of how the planet came to be the way it is, with some pretty easily discoverable plot twists and other stuff to keep it from getting too dull. It's far from the most original story ever conceived, but it's told pretty well and it's pretty fun watching Hulk and his pals destroy the crap out of everything. All I've really asked of these animated movies is they don't be boring, and Planet Hulk managed that pretty well. It's an old school kind of plot, fairly well animated, and well voiced by some veteran actors. Completely serviceable film.