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Sengoku Youko season 2 is a sequel that I wasn’t as hyped for as I ought to have been because the first season was a bit of a downgrade from the manga, but, as a diehard Satoshi Mizukami fanboy, I gave it a go anyway and had a pretty good time. Swapping out Jinka for Senya as the main protagonist was a pretty ballsy move that ended up playing into the story’s central themes regarding the cycle of violence and self-acceptance extremely well, and seeing Senya grow and mature through the support of those around him made his final confrontation with his own self-doubt quite ... gratifying. This is also an incredibly unpredictable series regarding the direction of its plot, and Mizukami’s deft melding of fantasy and sci-fi flavors crafts a vibrantly fun setting.
Unfortunately, this season still has mostly the same issues that season 1 did. The pacing always feels like it’s a bit too fast, leading some of the pivotal emotional moments to lack the lasting impact they could have had, and the overall artwork is just barely above average on the whole, very rarely presenting anything truly sensational and leaving Evan Call’s soundtrack to do a bit more heavy-lifting than it would have otherwise needed. At the end of the day, it’s still got all the things that make Mizukami one of my favorite authors, and with an immensely satisfying and thorough conclusion, I’m glad I stuck around to see this one through to the end.

Uzumaki is one of those rare, or at least used to be rare, instances of an anime immediately becoming infamous because of its production issues, and while I’d be remiss to gloss over the very obvious drops in quality, I still think there’s enough here for it to be a compelling horror series. The overall vibe of an entire town going batshit crazy due to internal forces they seem to have no control over was a perfect match for this body horror extravaganza, and the moments where the artwork manages to shine through delivered some exceptionally creepy and gruesome imagery, occasionally leaving me cringing from ... the imagined pain. It also nailed the more absurdly comedic aspects of these horrifying events in a manner similar to the works of Tsutomu Mizushima’s such as Another and Mayoiga, managing to keep the tone from stagnating while still keeping the tension high.
But, as I said, there is no denying that this production is a textbook example of reasons why David Zaslav is going to Hell. Some of this stuff is just plain laughable, and not in the intentional way I mentioned earlier, completely deflating the tension from an otherwise dramatic moment. I also found Kirie to me mostly uncompelling as the lead character, though Shuuichi’s doomer resignation helped bolster the overall sense of dread. Is it better than the source material? No, not even close, and maybe I was just in full cope mode while watching it, but this is not a completely broken series front to back. Try it out for yourself when you’re in the mood for some eerie, Lovecraftian horror.

My Hero Academia: You’re Next was a film that I honestly wasn’t super hyped for because I still hadn’t shaken off the meh of World Heroes Mission, but I ended up pleasantly surprised. Shounen spinoff movies live and die by two things: movie-original characters, and big fuck-off action sequences. With the former, You’re Next is a bit give and take. I really enjoyed the relationship between Giulio and Anna and how that relationship evolves as the film progresses, but found the fake All Might character to be a bit flatter than I was anticipating and did not offer any thematic substance that may have been ... hinted at in the trailers, and while it does a better job at incorporating all of Class 1-A than the previous film, it still could’ve gone a lot further.
On the other hand, boy these are some impressive action scenes. Handing the film off to Tensai Okamura came as a complete surprise to me, and his skills as a veteran action director are on full display. Whether it’s a high-speed car chase or punch-em-up of mass destruction, the My Hero films continue to be high-octane thrill fests. I realized as I was writing this that I had a lot less to say positively about this film than when I first saw it, mostly resulting from its story being pretty bog standard, but it’s still a success as far as shounen spinoff movies go. Much like the motif of smiles that ran throughout the film, I had a big ol’ grin plastered across my face by the end of the film.

A Herbivorous Dragon of 5000 Years Gets Unfairly Villainized season 2 marks the return of one of my favorite Chinese productions, and since I am the only person I’ve ever seen talk about it I feel the need to promote it as much as I can because this show is pretty cool. Outside of Gintama, I can’t remember the last anime that got me to consistently laugh this much, with the dragon’s attempts at maintaining his false identity as an all-powerful monster reaching new levels of absurdity, and Reiko’s blind devotion combined with her short temper and overpowered abilities made her a hilarious counterpart to ... said dragon. I also ended up way more invested in the royal family struggle between Rosetta and Vanessa than I was expecting, with the latter’s well-meaning, yet ignorant gestures towards the former making for a compelling and dramatic rivalry.
Aside from the gags, it's also got an incredible sense for good action sequences, some of which were honestly better than a lot of the more action-centric stuff I watched this year in terms of flashiness and impact, lending to an incredibly well-rounded viewing experience. After a parade of mediocre “sure I guess I’ll finish this one” shows, the ease with which I was able to fully settle into this series and get into the groove of binging it reminded me what a good show is supposed to feel like, and with each episode being only 13 minutes long, you can easily breeze through this one in an evening and be left wanting even more screen time from these lovable goofballs.

The Concierge is the third anime I’ve seen in the past few years about being a good hospitality worker, which doesn’t sound like a lot but still feels like a lot for some reason. In any case, I appreciated that this one doesn’t try to cover up the fact that sometimes the customer is just an asshole, and watching Akino try to figure out how to deal with them in the best manner possible was pretty engaging. It helps that the department store she works in, as well as its patrons, are drawn so vibrantly and with such attention to detail, especially in how the ... different anthropomorphic animal characters move around. It’s also got a solid balance between zany comedy and heartwarming sincerity, bouncing with ease from the store manager popping out of hammerspace without warning to Kenjirou Tsuda as an aging wooly mammoth reminiscing about his deceased wife.
That said, I can’t help but notice that there’s something unintentionally hollow at the core of this film. It has all the trappings of something that is attempting a critique of capitalism and over-consumption, with all the animal characters being extinct species, but it never really tries to say anything of substance. The window dressings are nice, but once you peek behind the curtain, there’s not much there. Still, it’s not as egregiously hollow as it could have been, with a solid core cast to keep everything well-balanced, and with a shocking short runtime of just over 75 minutes, it’s an easy watch if you’re looking for a decent comedy.

I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History is a series that is equal parts fascinating and frustrating. This latest entry into the burgeoning villainess isekai genre gives us a protagonist, Alicia, who’s actually glad she became the villainess because it allows her to address her qualms with the game’s heroine and dismantle what she sees as undeserved talk-no-jutsu-style powers of communication, and it made Alicia a shockingly compelling villainess. Unfortunately, this ends up getting balanced out by Alicia receiving what are essentially super studying abilities and becoming extremely overpowered very quickly, constantly doing things that would normally merit major consequences but walking away ... mostly scot-free, so it rarely feels like she has to put in any effort to get what she wants. Most of the other characters outside of the heroine are fairly forgettable, but the overall chemistry of the cast, especially between Alicia and Duke, create some surprisingly engrossing dialogue that allows each episode to fly by with ease.
I should also commend it, albeit in a very backhanded way, for probably being the best-looking Maho Films anime to date, which is not exactly a high bar. It still has the occasional png drift and the general framing and cinematography aren’t especially noteworthy, but it is passable most of the time, and they nailed all of Alicia’s designs so props for that I guess. It feels like I’m undercutting this series a lot, but I did genuinely enjoy it overall, and I legit did not predict the twist in the final episode, leaving me with enough of a desire for more that I wouldn’t mind a second season.

365 Days to the Wedding is the latest entry into the subgenre of romcoms that I’m sure has a name already but I’m going to affectionately call “oops we’re getting married now” romcoms, which is great because I love that shit. What makes this one in particular stand out for me is that this show might have the most socially inept romantic leads I’ve ever seen, leading the story straight towards a deep dive into communication and how to properly convey your feelings to someone who doesn’t have access to your internal thoughts. I found myself relating to these two far more often than I ... expected, whether it’s Ohara’s inability to accurately express his frustrations with what others expect from him or Honjoji’s instinct to bottle up her feelings so as not to let others down.
Unfortunately, the first half of this series isn’t exactly a barn-burner of a story. It works well in establishing some of the interesting quirks of our leads and the supporting cast is pretty fun, but the moment to moment interactions can be pretty flat, borderline boring at times, with a lot of this due to how incredibly plain and unambitious the production is. There were more than a few times where I thought “this would probably be better in live action,” though that would also mean losing a surprisingly ranged performance from Saori Hayami. That said, the chemistry between the leads carried this series a lot further than I expected and the romance elements definitely started picking up steam in the back half, so overall I would say it was mostly worth my time.

[This is the text version of this review. For the video version, visit Ember Reviews on YouTube]

Pokemon is probably one of the most basic and clean-cut examples you can find of an episodic adventure series. Ash wants to be the greatest Pokemon master in the world and he refuses to stop until he achieves his goal, and every episode in between is something that either helps him achieve this goal, impedes his progress, or has a lesson to teach him or one of his friends that will aid them in the future.

Of course, this kind of structure also means that most of the enjoyment gleamed ... from this series comes from the strength of each individual episode, which is, unfortunately, very hit and miss. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of really good episodes and even some fantastic ones that are better than some of the adult anime titles I watch now. However, there are also quite a few episodes that just fall into repetitive patterns with wholly uninteresting side characters, and when a long stretch of episodes like this shows up, which happens several times in seasons 3 and 4, it can be a pretty tedious watch. Fortunately, there are definitely a lot more good episodes than bad ones, and when longer story arcs do come into play, the emotional beats they hit are really solid.

A lot of my favorite episodes though are ones that put a side character at the center of the plot seemingly just for giggles, such as when Togepi accidentally steals one of Team Rocket’s tanks and they have to stop it before it runs into a populated area, or when Wobbufett is carrying a key to a box that Pikachu is locked in, but he keeps getting tossed around a city in the most cartoonish ways possible. The really weird episodes also tend to stand out either for being extremely creative like having all the Pokemon’s lines being translated for us or having Ash get turned into a Pikachu, or for going about an emotional arc in a unique way, like trapping everyone inside Larvitar’s mind in order to soothe his fractured psyche.

Pokemon also has the advantage of pulling ideas from an inherently creative source material, giving it a ton of room to craft new ideas for each episode. However, instead of a straight adaptation of the Pokemon video games, the games’ worlds and structures are there simply as outlines for the writers to create their own story, and, in my opinion, this makes Pokemon the best adaptation of a video game I’ve seen to date. By not forcing an adaptation of a story structure that’s not directly translatable to the TV medium, the series has room to craft its own story and a tone that matches. It still retains the badge collecting plot from the games to serve as a progression marker for Ash’s journey, but many other points have been altered or omitted entirely, such as changing the Pokemon League’s Elite Four challenge into a simpler tournament-style championship.

This also gives the series more leeway when constructing its characters, and man do we have some characters. Even without my nostalgia kicking in, I can honestly say that Ash is one of the most fleshed-out and multi-faceted anime characters I’ve ever seen. He dreams of being the very best like no one ever was, but he has to claw his way up from the very bottom to get there. He has a huge stubborn streak and can get really hot-headed at times, especially when goaded on by his rival, Gary, but he’s still a good person at heart who loves and cares for his Pokemon and will go out of his way to help someone in need. He’s not the most intelligent person, which can get a bit infuriating when Team Rocket’s schemes are so blatantly obvious and when he makes amateurish mistakes in battle, but his ingenuity and ability to think on his feet are usually enough to get him out of most situations. When it comes to children’s anime, my favorite kind of main character is an imperfect, relatable role model that always tries their best, and Ash fits the bill to a T while also throwing in a dozen more details to make him feel even more like a real person, and I’d be hard-pressed to write this much about another anime character, save for this next one.

Meanwhile, Misty as the female lead is nothing to scoff at either, and she still stands as one of my favorite role models for young girls in any fictional medium. Instead of filling out a traditional feminine stereotype or deliberately going against the grain as an all-out tomboy, Misty treads the less-traveled path of walking straight down the middle. She’s strong-willed and loves to battle, but she’s also into beauty and other feminine ideas. She’s hot-headed and stubborn enough to hang with the boys, but she’s still afraid of bugs. She’s independent and has her own goals to strive towards, but she can also act very motherly and take care of others when she needs to. Many people have been led to call her inconsistent or nonsensical over the years because of this dual nature, but this just makes her an even more interesting character and a better role model for young girls. To me, Misty’s character is saying “you don’t have to be this or that, but you can if you want to be; or you can be both, neither, or a varying balance of the two,” and for a children’s show, that’s a pretty amazing feat.

Brock stands up well as a slightly older member of the crew and acts as a strong mentor to Ash when he needs it, though his romantic mishaps can become rather annoying at times, and, unfortunately, there’s really nothing else to his character besides those two things, though to be fair I am comparing him to characters that I just wrote two massive paragraphs about. As for other side protagonists, I don’t have time to talk about them much in detail, but while most of them are there more for Ash’s story to progress, there are a select few that become interesting in their own right and are strong enough to become recurring characters throughout the show.

And, of course, what would an adventure series be without some villains, and Team Rocket members Jessie, James, and Meowth fill this role nicely. Again, the repetitive nature can become a bit burdensome at times and that ends up decreasing how threatening they can be in a given situation, but for the most part, they stand up as antagonists to Ash’s progress fairly well, while also adding a ton of comedy to the series as the bumbling idiots that they are, though I think my favorite aspect of them is that they aren’t really evil other than in name. We’re given many glimpses into their pasts throughout the show and how many other things they’ve tried and failed to do, and by the end they come across as villains who are only villains because they need the money to eat instead of some generic puppy-kicking bad guys, and that very subtle blurring of the good/evil dichotomy is a great lesson for both kids and adults.

The animation by OLM is, unfortunately, pretty much what you’d expect from a kids’ show. While the bright colors and unique Pokemon designs that adapt Ken Sugimori’s original concept art excellently are still there, the actual animation is about as bare bones as you can possibly get, complete with whooshing backgrounds that anime has used for decades as a cheap way of conveying speed or intensity. While the battles themselves can be pretty exciting at times, it usually not because of stellar fight choreography, so the series has to rely on its creativity and the strength of its story to carry the action sequences through. Pokemon is also one of the few anime that changed over from cel-animation to digital within a single season instead of waiting for time off to make the switch, and you can definitely see that they needed a little more time to adjust to their new tools.

With the soundtrack, Shinji Miyazaki does a great job of adapting Junichi Masuda’s themes from the original video games, while also adding in his own tracks for more variety. Additionally, though I can’t find out who it was, some tracks were replaced by another composer for the dub release, and this becomes very apparent when John Loeffler’s tracks from Mewtwo Strikes Back end up being implemented in seasons 4 and 5.

I would say that now it the time for the debate over subs or dubs, but let’s be honest: if you really need a reason to stay away from this dub in particular, then you really don’t need me to tell you that. It’s definitely not the best acted dub ever and there are some pretty awkward script changes, as well as some laughable translation errors, but, to me at least, not hearing Veronica Taylor, Rachel Lillis, and Eric Stuart plays these parts would be even more jarring for me than the awkward acting, which I actually experienced while watching the banned episodes that were never dubbed.

Overall, if you’re looking for me to say that Pokemon is worth a nostalgia trip, then I can respond with a wholehearted “absolutely.” Adults with enjoy the creativity and heart that this series has to offer just as much as they did when they were younger. If you’re looking for advice on whether to show this to your own kids, then I can say yes to that as well, especially if they’re already Pokemon fans, as the fun and excitement of it all will draw them in while also feeding them strong moral values like respect for others and never giving up. Of course, it also goes without saying that if you never saw this series while growing up, or if you’re not really a Pokemon fan at all, then I’d be hard pressed to recommend it, though I do think there is some value in it as a standalone work.

In regards to my thoughts on each season individually, there is definitely a lot of credence to the prevailing idea of season 1, The Indigo League, having the highest concentration of great episodes. However, my personal favorite has always been season 2, the Orange Islands, as I found breaking away from the game’s story entirely was both a bold move and a great way to get even crazier with some of the ideas. Season 5, Master Quest, also has a ton of episodes that sit towards the top of my favorites like the Larvitar arc, Baby Lugia arc, the Whirl Cup, and the Johto Silver Conference. In terms of which is the weakest, I’d say season 3, Johto Journeys, just barely edges out season 4, Johto League Champions. Both of them only had maybe one of two really great episodes like Hour of the Houndour or The Wayward Wobbufett, but Johto Journeys definitely had a higher concentration of bad episodes. I had actually never seen the episode where Ash catches his Chikorita until my most recent viewing of the series, and, in hindsight, I might have preferred for it to stay that way, as it was easily one of the worst episodes of the entire series.

As a brief note, however, if you plan on only watching the first five seasons as I have and not continuing on to Pokemon Advanced, I would suggest skipping Episode 276 “Hoenn Alone!,” as it feels more like the first episode of season 6 than the last episode of season 5. As for my reasoning on why I stopped there for my review, I consider Pokemon Advanced the start of a long decline in both writing and animation quality for the Pokemon TV series, not just because of nostalgia bias, but because this marks the point where Takeshi Shudo, the lead writer responsible for creating the main character cast and the overall direction of the writing as a whole, stopped working on the series. After this point, the writing became more and more formulaic, repetitive, and completely lacking in the emotional punches that the first few seasons were so effective at doling out, so I really can’t recommend continuing on after season 5, at least until I get around to finishing X&Y.

Pokemon is licensed by Viz Media and the first five seasons are all readily available for purchase, though they do not contain the half dozen or so banned episodes like Electric Soldier Porygon or The Ice Cave. Additionally, the Pokemon TV website cycles through batches of episodes every week, so check them out to see if your favorite episode is up right now, though I did notice some definite audio problems while using their video player.

Final Score: Light 7

Man what the hell do I even say about this one?

This is an anime that works much more solidly on a thematic and symbolic level than it does on a basic plot level, with most of the actions and scenarios set up for meaning rather than for story. This isn't necessarily an inherently bad way to go about constructing a series, but it will absolutely put off any viewers that aren't prepared for this kind of narrative.

Personally, this is the kind of anime that I've been craving for a lot as of late since I've been looking for shows that break the mold of what ... the current industry has become, so I found Alien Nine to be quite thrilling, but in a much more unnerving and unsettling way, which is another style that I've been craving a lot lately. Perhaps the ending of Berserk has finally broken me, but that's neither here nor there.

This anime delves into a lot of themes relating to puberty and the general discomfort and fear of growing up, with some scenes being nice and subtle, and other quite literally bashing you over the head. While this might appear as having a sporadic and uneven tone to some, I think it actually fits the allegory for adolescence quite nicely.

It's also a horror anime in the sense of what I mean when I talk about true horror, in that there is something outside of your control bearing down on you, digging into your weak points and dragging you through some truly dreadful experiences. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me that Gen Urobuchi had seen this anime at some point and let some of its themes influence his work on Madoka Magica. This is purely a hypothetical conjecture obviously and I'm not in any way suggesting that Alien Nine had a direct influence on Madoka, but they do seem rather similar to me when it comes to the terrifying circumstances that both casts have to deal with.

However, I do have to knock off a few points for almost wrapping up the ending nicely, but then throwing in a scene at the very end that leaves a gaping hole in the conclusion that desperately needs more content that will never be animated due to lack of popularity.

Much like the story, the characters operate on a much more symbolic level than a logical one, and because there's a lot of implicit meaning behind their actions that isn't openly stated, a lot of what these characters do may come off as irrational and just plain stupid sometimes. I did find Yuri to be an excellent youth protagonist, though a tiny bit annoying sometimes, and watching her struggle with the aforementioned themes, and even just her daily school life, made the peak moments of terror all the more traumatic and unnerving.

The animation is handled by J.C. Staff, and while I'm not gonna pretend that the animation holds of really well (this is an OVA from the early 2000s after all), I am surprised by how much detail went into both the environments and the alien designs. There's also a fluidity of movement that you don't see very often outside of the experimental OVA field and I wish I could see more often in regular TV anime, though I believe it would be more accurate to say that I wish there were more TV anime with darker, more emotional themes and experimental storytelling methods that can push the boundaries of what a visual medium can do. The character designs are fairly simple and do their job in creating unique and memorable characters, but the consistency does leave a lot to be desired. There's also some pretty nasty CG that pops up constantly, which put a big damper on some of the more important scenes.

As for the soundtrack, I've noticed that a lot of the most striking soundtracks come from works that have less of a need to stick to a traditional classical or rock sound, and that is certainly the case with Kuniaki Haishima's work on this anime. There really isn't a selection of words or phrases that I could describe this soundtrack with other than bizarre, with a lot of different styles and sounds crashing together to create some extremely unsettling and agitating tunes, and I will definitely be coming back to this soundtrack in the near future.

Overall, if you're not one to stray from traditional storytelling and dialogue, then you will probably have a lot of difficulties watching this anime, but if you're like me and feel that you can get suckered into this strange world, only to have your heart slump down awkwardly in your chest as the fear and anxiety wash over you, then give this one a try.

I was a bit indecisive about what kind of rating I wanted to give this one, but then I remembered that I completely ignored my dinner just so that I could finish the series, so I guess I have my answer.

Like many anime fans of my generation, I began my life as an anime fan through Cartoon Network's Toonami block, featuring shounen classics such as Dragon Ball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Rurouni Kenshin. However, for me personally, I was on the tail end of those shows' airtime, only catching the Majin Buu saga and reruns of the first few episodes of other shows. I didn't come in at the beginning, so it wasn't like starting a brand new adventure, and it wasn't until around 2005 that I first got to experience the start of a brand new story, and that story, of course, was ... Naruto, an epic reinterpretation of ninjas combined with the superpower action/adventure style of DBZ and other shounen tropes, though of course I had no idea what shounen was at the time. Now, after over a decade of popularity in the US, and half a decade more in Japan, the last story in the Naruto-verse has finally been told.

Several years after the Fourth Shinobi World War, Naruto has finally become the Seventh Hokage, and a time of peace and prosperity has descended upon the Leaf Village. However, this time our focus is not on Naruto, but on his son, Boruto, a young ninja desperately seeking the attention of his father, who has become overwhelmed with his duties as Hokage and barely has time to spend with his family anymore. Through his trials in the lead-up to the Chunin Exams, as well as a mysterious new villain making an appearance, Boruto attempts to garner his father's attention and force him to recognize his exceptional talent as a shinobi and give him the attention he so desperately craves.

Much like Naruto: The Last, we've moved past simply adding a new villain for our favorite characters to fight against, and instead the main focus of this movie is on the emotional turmoil that Boruto and Naruto have to work through in their strained father-son relationship. This part of the story is pretty straightforward and basic, though that's really all that it needs to be. Naruto doesn't have time to spend with his son, so Boruto gets angry and hates his dad's guts, yet still tries his best to get his dad to notice him. In terms of the franchise's history, Boruto is actually a fairly weak-willed main character at times and gives up a lot more easily than his father ever did, though this still seems to work because, rather than not having anyone in the first place like Naruto, or having his family taken from him like Sasuke, he instead feels abandoned by a father who is still technically there but doesn't pay enough attention, causing him to essentially lose hope that his situation will ever get better, and when he does finally start seeing reassurance from his father after Boruto starts making more headway in the ninja world, he subconsciously rebounds and does everything he can to keep his dad's attention, even if his methods start to deviate from the shinobi way. In a way, this sort of echoes Sasuke's history, which kind of makes sense since Sasuke is Boruto's mentor for a good portion of the film, and at times it almost feels like Boruto sees Sasuke as someone to fill the void left by his barely-there father, though this idea isn't explored too much in the film. The overall arc of Boruto's character is probably the best part of this film, as it reaches a satisfying conclusion in the final act.

As for Naruto, this is probably the most difficult part of the story to convey to the audience, since they have to make Naruto look extremely busy without making him act like a douche to his family, and with the exception of a few lines, they manage to do that fairly well. You can definitely see that he's become overloaded and exhausted from his work as Hokage, and also that he's still trying to find time to spend with his family, although failing miserably. There are a few moments in the beginning though where the strictness he's adopted as the Hokage seems to be a bit too forced for his character and ends up making him look a bit uncaring, which is hardly the kind of trait you would expect from Naruto.

As for the rest of the cast, most of them are fairly solid. I ended up liking Sarada a lot more than I thought I would since she ends up being an interesting support character for Boruto in sharing similar elements of their parental situations. I do wish they had explored her more in this movie, but I suppose that's what Seventh Hokage and the Scarlet Spring is for. The rest of the characters fill out their own fan service and nostalgia roles pretty nicely, and I didn't really expect any more than that since it would end up clogging up the main story line. The main villain, unfortunately, is pretty much as generic as they come. Again, anything super-complex would have bogged down the character drama between Boruto and Naruto, but this guy's about as plain and standard as they come. They try to work him into the already existing shinobi history, which worked out fine in Naruto: The Last, but it feels like too much of a stretch in this case and a lot of the details feel a bit jumbled and rushed.

The new technology they introduce in this film was also a bit odd at times. I've always felt that Kishimoto has struggled with balancing how much advanced technology is used in the Naruto universe, and this movie almost fixes that problem by basically showing this giant leap forward in technology, and it even seems to address the debate of whether hard work and willpower or technology and cutting edge tools with spearhead the future of the shinobi world, but it's still just a tad too jagged and uneven at times.

As for animation, this is definitely one of the best-looking Naruto films thus far, though I'm not quite sure I would call it the best. The character designs are about as refined and polished as they've ever been, though I did notice quite a few draw distance issues. Perhaps this was more a problem with the theater I saw it in...amongst many other problems I had with my particular theater viewing, that will eventually be fixed by the time the Blu-rays come out, but it's still something worth noting. To my delight, this film does not rely nearly as much on CG environments as previous movies have done, though there are still a few whiffs of that pungent CG stench hanging around. As for the action scenes, once again, it does a lot of things right, and a lot of things not so right. When it gets into the huger scale of things, the choreography and particle physics are outstanding, with tons of vivid colors and unique attack designs, and watching these massive explosions and earth-shattering jutsu go off in everyone's faces is spectacular to watch. On the other end though, a lot of the smaller, hand-to-hand choreography is a bit disappointing, especially compared to the previous film. There are a few moments where the hand-to-hand gets pretty awesome and some of the more complex strategies and jutsu are fun to watch, but these moments largely fall by the wayside in exchange for a “whoever has the biggest jutsu wins” competition like the latter half of the main Naruto storyline fell into. The very end of the battle did have at least some smartness to it though, so I wasn't dissatisfied by the ending to a significant degree. Despite its flaws though, this is some of the better work that Studio Pierrot has put out so far, and it's a great way to view the shinobi world for one last time.

On the soundtrack end of things, it's pretty much the same as it's always been: an epic combination of orchestral and rock compositions with that extra Eastern flavor of shamisen, taiko drums, and bamboo flute that has shaped the Naruto soundtrack's identity for the past thirteen years. The ending song played during the credits was provided by Kana-Boon and gives us that last burst of excitement as what is most likely the final chapter in the Naruto world comes to a close. Oh by the way, make sure you watch the after-credits scene because it is absolutely something that you do not want to miss.

Overall, if you go into this movie thinking it'll be the big final hoorah of the Naruto franchise and that it's the best story yet, you'll probably be disappointed. To me, the final climax of Naruto was in Naruto: The Last, if you couldn't tell from how often I brought it up during this review, and Boruto is more of a fan service/second generation side story that serves as more of a dessert dish rather than the last bite of a spectacular main course. Despite that, though, I still highly recommend that you see this movie if you are a Naruto fan because, despite all its flaws, it's still probably the last major project that Kishimoto will make for the Naruto franchise, and that's...kinda sad for me. Even though there are so many other, much better anime out there, Naruto is the one that, for me and thousands, possibly millions of other anime fans, shaped how we viewed anime as we were growing up, and to know that the story is now completely finished is kind of depressing. Sure the TV anime is still going...for some reason, but the manga's story is completely finished and now there's this void left behind from a series that's been a massive part of my life for so long that I can't even remember what life was like without Naruto. From the first volume to the last, from Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow to Boruto, and the dozens of side stories in-between, this has been one hell of a ride. Knowing that there's a future without more Naruto is really weird for me, and, in time, perhaps a new franchise will take its place...but, that's a story for another day.

For now, I say "Sayonara" to a franchise that, despite its flaws, means more to me than others can possibly imagine.