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Neighborhood Story, The Movie
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Title Info
- type: movie
- grade: flawed
- made: unknown
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
This movie has many fine qualities...well, it has one fine quality...then again, does being really short count as a fine quality? Well it does in this case, because this movie well sums up the vacuous nature, cliche stories and painful style of the TV series. The story revolves around festival day at art high school were a bunch of `crazy creative types' try to convert others to their way of thinking. Given how weird they are their lack of success isn't too suprising. However two members of the group are very popular, Nice Body-Ko the vapid but attractive airhead and Tsutomo who looks like a famous singer. This is enough to send his female childhood friend with poor temper control into berserker mode, which of course means that really, deep down, she loves him. But that's fine cause he loves her too, and after a bit of moping they both realize what has been obvious to the audience since the first frame.
There, I spoiled it as completely as I could, there is now no reason to watch it. Then again, this is such a familiar, almost cliche, shoujo foundation that I doubt anyone was suprised. Indeed the writing is so shallow and obvious that it is clear how this is going to turn out. This is enhanced even more if you've seen any of the TV series, because it's the same tired plot that underlies the first episodes of that series. The characters are little better than charicatures and the supporting characters barely get a mention. There's just nothing in this empty bag of wind.
And then there's the animation. Loud and obnoxious voices to go with the unsubtle dialog. The animation itself is crude and heavily stylised, seeming to derive from some weird 70's psychedelic nightmare. It might be cool to a Japanese audience, but it just looks corny to me. This is accentuated by sloppy animation, brutal coloring and weird physical motions which are probably intended to be comical. Aaargh...i've really got no problem with a creative team attempting to do something new and different. But does it really have to be this ugly and this trite?
None of my regular review sources have anything for this title. Although if you can find a review for the TV series then it probably applies to this as well.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:22 WST 2009