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craigjameshenderson
Reviews
The Rain (2018)
Ignore the bad reviews and judge it for yourself
I'm baffled by the amount of reviewers on here who have dragged this (actually pretty good) TV show through the mud before even giving it much of a chance, so I'm going to address some of these points.
Point 1: People do stupid things
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you may have noticed that some people do stupid things. Voting for Donald Trump in the US and voting for Brexit in the UK, for example. Can you imagine in that case how irrationally and unpredictably people would react when put into a situation where the very rain outside has become tainted with a deadly virus? I think this show makes a pretty attempt at conveying this.
Point 2: The acting in this sucks
No. It really, really doesn't. Maybe most of these people who left it bad reviews were watching the dubbed version but I always watch foreign language things with subtitles and I found the acting to be actually rather brilliant. There's some really raw emotions running throughout this show and the cast put in good performances all round. The characters are well formed too, with each of them having their own separate flashbacks to their lives before the event, so you could really identify with their loss and their character traits.
Point 3: Yes, it's a bit of a mish-mash
In today's TV, is it really so offensive for a director/writer to show that they have been influenced by other things? With The Walking Dead being such a smash hit, why shouldn't other TV shows attempt to cash in on that a little. I certainly drew WD comparisons from it, but this was purely because of the post-apocalyptic nature of the story rather than there being any obvious references. There are no zombies and the story has some really original ideas and cool tech that I've not seen in anything else.
In short, just watch this show. I think it's pretty good.
The New Legends of Monkey (2018)
Enjoyable, silly fun!
This just sort of appeared on Netflix with little fanfare as far as I was aware, so I was unsure if it was going to be any good or not - but I do remember the equally amazing and terrible old Monkey Magic show and decided to give this a go.
...And I'm actually pretty glad that I did! As a few of the other reviewers have said, this is definitely more along the lines of Hercules and Xena, with ridiculously silly fight-scenes, a good deal of slapstick, silly one-liners and all that sort of good stuff. Considering the somewhat low budget, the effects are actually pretty good and do well to convey a world of magic and wonder, whereas a great deal of the actual action is practical.
The episodes are pretty short (around 25 minutes each) so it never outstays its welcome, but because of the short length they're somewhat restrained in terms of what they can do with the plotting - but Monkey was never about complex plots; it was always about good vs evil and having a bit of fun while it was at it. Thankfully, that sense of fun is the most important thing about these new adventures, and I'm definitely going to be sticking around for the journey!
Kujira no kora wa sajô ni utau (2017)
A stunning beautiful and original anime!
I'm not all of the way through it yet (two episodes to go!), but I feel compelled to come on here and write something about it.
When I first started watching 'Children of the Whales', I have to admit that I found it pretty dull to begin with but on the hand I was intrigued by its originality and decided to stick with it to see where it was heading, and... Well, I'm really glad that I did! Although it does start off pretty slowly, it takes a very dark turn around half way through the season and actually gets very good indeed. In fact, I found that the contrast between the idyllic beginning and the subsequent violence when Falaina is invaded was actually pretty shocking.
It's always great to discover an anime that isn't all about giant robots and shallow characters, and with CotW it's the characters and writing that really makes it stand out. There's some really great character development throughout the first series and many of the ideas and concepts are brilliantly original and are executed with some of the nicest art and designs I've seen in an anime for quite some time. There's a deep seam of emotion running through the show as well, and it is with some reluctance that I admit that it actually made me well up on more than one occasion.
Much of this emotion is down to the really rather superb music, with both the opening and closing title music (and the incidental music throughout the show) being absolutely amazing - in fact, it's one of the few shows where I actually watch them all the way through to listen to them, which is high praise indeed.
Overall, I'd got as far as saying that this is one of the most stunningly original anime I've seen in ages and I can't wait to see if they're going to make a second series.
The Expanse (2015)
Best Sci-Fi show since BSG? Definitely.
It's been a good length of time since there's been a truly great Sci-Fi series on TV. In fact, not since the excellent Battlestar Galactica has there been a single TV series which has excited me as much as The Expanse has. I've watched the first season twice now (in fact, I just finished the final episode a few minutes ago, hence my desire to get on here and gush about it) and watching it for the second time actually made me appreciate it even more.
It's a grim, dark and grimy Science Fiction series which features possibly the best world-building I've ever seen on a TV show; in fact, the show is so beautifully made that it would be easy to convince someone that they were watching a high-budget sci-fi movie rather than a TV show - it's really incredible. The visual effects are simply outstanding for a TV show - particularly the scenes in zero-gravity where a character's hair moves around convincingly as if she was in a zero-g environment; I'm still not sure how they've achieved that! Another great and realistic touch is how the spacecraft move; they look like they have inertia and move in a rather cumbersome fashion when compared to ships in other sci-fi shows.
They've got a good cast on-board, too. Heading it off as a hot- headed and impulsive (but eminently likable) detective is the excellent Thomas Jane - I seriously have no idea why he's not an a- list star as he's one of the best actors around right now, but I'm glad to see him taking a sci-fi role which no doubt going to become a feather in his cap. The rest of the cast are mostly new faces (to me at least) but not one of them is unlikable and the acting quality is consistently good throughout the first series.
Since the series is based on a series of books, the source material is great and varied and by all accounts they're sticking well to the plot - and I hope they continue to do so.
All in all, I thoroughly recommend this show if, like me, you're hankering after a good sci-fi show to fill the gap that BSG left when it ended.