popcar2

If you've never read the series and are a fan of fantasy, you'll probably enjoy this. As a fan of the source material, I was huffing a lot of copium whenever I saw how they adapted scenes from the book.

The Sandman is probably my favorite graphic novel of all time, so to see it getting adapted is pretty exciting. That said, it's not nearly as good. They made the story worse by making the Corinthian the big bad of the series. The direction is just bland. They take scenes from the book and make it worse, dumb down the dialogue, and talk a lot of exposition to make it more mainstream. It also tries to be a lot more EPIC but it falls flat in many moments.

It should've been animated. The visuals are nice and all but most of it is not convincing in live action and they had to sacrifice a lot to fit their budget. Hell in particular is so unbelievably bland and boring. If they're going to hit me with the "it's too expensive to make everything happen in CGI" excuse every few scenes, then it shouldn't have been live action in the first place.

Acting is so-so. Most of the main characters are good but some of them (like Lucifer) are too cheesy and unconvincing.

When Marnie Was There is a movie that deals with a very important message (depression, not really liking who you are as a person, and the lack of connection between other people), but sadly it's as deep as a puddle and most of the plot feels... Pointless?

We see the main character, Anna, having to travel to a small village for a while due to a health issue and her having to breathe fresh air. The whole plot revolves around her coming into contact with Marnie, which has a mysterious past and a rough childhood.

Most of the movie consists of fairly harmless scenes about their friendship, which is cool, but doesn't push the plot forwards at all. Near the end of the movie, we finally get the answer to who Marnie is, but it's some of the most underwhelming reveals I've ever seen.

The plot feels like it's leading up to something that's not really there, and the ending feels like a weird "and then everything everyone lived happily ever after" situation that doesn't feel earned at all.

That said, I did kind of enjoy this movie. The animation is gorgeous (VERY gorgeous!), and the scenes were good enough to keep me interested on what'll happen next. It's a decent family movie, but I sadly didn't connect with it as much as others did.

Steins;Gate was an amazing anime that was full of twists and turns and a very heartwrenching story on sacrifice and moving on. Steins Gate 0 is more of that, but worse in many ways.

Most of the plot twists were really predictable especially since the anime beats you in the head with its 'hints' and assumes you wouldn't get it, but I knew where a lot of plot points were going just a few episodes in. A lot of the episodes feel disconnected and some of them are just repeating the exact same points: Okabe is depressed, Mayuri wants him to be happy, the other guys want to try and fix the timeline. It's the same few cliches done for a long time. The action scenes are also horrible, but thankfully they don't take much screen time.

That said, steins;gate 0 *is* a good sequel to the first, but keep your expectations low. Some scenes were really powerful, and in the end it feels like it wraps up the series in a fairly satisfying way. I'd give this a 6.5/10.