Operator7G

It had been a while since I saw A Simple Favor, so I rewatched it before watching this sequel. All it did was emphasize what a poor follow up this movie is, which is a shame seeing as how they brought back the actors from the first movie. There is none of the character or plot development that made the first movie interesting. Another Simple Savor feels like a completely different genre with the comedic relief booking agent and the various side characters that seem like they're going to contribute more to the plot but end up collecting dust in the corner. Even the main character, Stephanie, felt rushed in building her backstory and quickly tying up her loose ends in the denouement. It was disappointing at best.

As the summary says, watching this live action series was like watching a Cliff's Notes version of the story. It's very high level with little detail, so it's hard to fully buy into any of the characters' emotions or motivations. Fortunately, I had just finished the 38 ep, 2 season anime series, so I knew a lot of what was going on in the background, at least for episodes 1 through 7. Once the series got to where the anime series ended, everything seemed rushed and a bit confusing, which stands to reason when you consider they were averaging 5 anime episodes per live action episode. This series definitely would have benefitted from being either a full 25 episode season or two 13 episode half seasons. I don't want to spoil anything, so suffice it to say that there are some character relationships that seem to come out of nowhere, and are really tough to accept, because there wasn't enough time to develop them, which is a shame. Still, it's a nice slice of life/coming of age story.

Season 1 featured 18 shorts that were, for the most part, very entertaining although often featuring nudity for the sake of nudity. They were short but told interesting stories that left you thinking about what might have happened after the ending. Seasons 2 and 3 have fewer but longer episodes, which is a blessing and a curse. There are fewer to bore you, but it takes longer to get through each one. They were almost all lessons in how great and photorealistic computer animation can be, but they lacked quality storytelling, not to mention that they were almost all dark and depressing. The only bright light was provided by the three robots. My rating of seven primarily speaks to the strength of the Season 1 offerings.