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Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005)
Absolutely everyone should watch this show.
I have watched this series over 15 times. And it never gets old. Avatar is an incredible television show full of heart and epic fantasy. The fight sequences are perfectly choreographed. The animation is beautiful and only improves over the course of the series. The female characters are some of the most-well written and complex in television to date, Azula being one of the best static characters of all time. Asian philosophy is intimately woven into the fabric of the show and educates the audience while breathing life into its universe. Even after 10 years, television and film alike fail to tell stories with the authenticity and wonder that Avatar has. Absolutely everyone should watch this show.
Empire of the Sun (1987)
Pointless, long, unlikable, and confusing
I would definitely recommend that those interested in watching skip this film.
Spielbergs' film imagines a grim colonial Shanghai, full of selfish and antagonistic individuals whose sinister traits are only exacerbated by the onset of war. I'm a history student and watched this for a paper I was writing over film in the British Empire. This film was long, meandering, and aimless. I have absolutely no idea what it was trying to say. Jim is an extremely annoying and privileged upper-class child of British colonists. I understand in part that this is meant to illustrate that he is extremely sheltered, but he fails to become more endearing as the film progresses, even as he gains more real-world experience.
Which brings me to my next point; no one in this film is likable. Basie is extraordinarily arrogant and rude, his affection for Jim feels entirely conditional, his dialogue feels anachronistic (lots of cheesy 80s cool guy one-liners), and his character ultimately feels pointless. The doctor and other characters who act as paternal figures for Jim are all cowardly or self-serving, or both. This is perhaps to portray how people become self-serving in times of war or disaster (which isn't supported by evidence; in times of disaster people are more pro-social), but it just makes everyone in the film unlikable and gives viewers no one to root for. Jim's parents are pretentious, underdeveloped, and it feels as if they have only the slightest affection for him.
The depiction of Chinese and Japanese people has not aged well, either. The Chinese characters in this film are depicted as ingratiating, subservient, or antagonistic toward the British. The Japanese (with the exception of one teenage boy who perhaps serves as an analogue to Jim) are depicted as bloodthirsty and uncompassionate warriors. While they were fascists who committed a number of war crimes during WW2, I still think their overall cruelty played up within this film.
This film felt like it was 30 or 45 minutes too long. There seemed to be no clear thesis or unifying purpose to the film. It's not even especially valuable historically, it mostly focuses on Jim's individual perceptions and experiences with war, but never seems to drive home a defined point about how war affects children or how they experience it, other than Jim acting downright irrational and bizarre towards the end.
Game of Thrones (2011)
Overrated. Avatar the Last Airbender is better.
Review pretty much sums it up. The last season was mediocre, the ending was a disaster. It's still a great show, don't get me wrong, and the first few seasons are still great if you'd consider watching. Sad that it had such a rushed and sloppy execution the last few seasons of what was once a gloriously detailed, rich and immersive fantasy series.
EDIT: I changed my rating from a 6 (which I believe is accurate when assessing the series as a wholes) to a 1 to bring the ratings down. It does not deserve a 9.3.
I've also thought more about how gratuitous the violence and sexual assault is in this show. Not only is it unnecessary and sensationalist, it's ahistorical. I am a history major and my medieval history professor made a point to point out the historical inaccuracies in this show. Yes, it's fantasy, but it still perpetuates negative false stereotypes about medieval life.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Not 10-stars-good, but sure as hell better than what these butthurt "anti-sjws" are rating it
This show definitely has its setbacks. The animation is choppy and subpar at some points, especially in episode 4. However, it improves progressively throughout the series. The show has a Steven-Universe-meets-anime style, but the animation quality is not as smooth or detailed as either, and the choppiness with which the characters move is much more reminiscent of early-mid 2000s American cartoons. However, as I said, the animation continually improves throughout the series. The character, designs, however, are all excellent (with the exception of Angella, who I feel looks a bit too much like an emaciated anime girl).
Plotwise, the show borrows heavily from both Avatar: The Last Airbender and Steven Universe, though perhaps this is due more to the archetypal story elements that they share and less of a direct inspiration. It's definitely weaker and a bit laggy in the first half, but by the second half of the first season the show really starts to pick up and become much more interesting.
Overall, I would give the first season of the show a 7 or 8 out of 10. I think that it shows a lot of promise. The first seasons of both ATLA and Steven Universe were nowhere near indicative of the gorgeous animation, thrilling battles, and incredible storytelling the shows would come to have in their later season.
I also can not fathom why this show is getting so much flack for having racial diversity, diverse body representations, and strong female characters when ATLA, Steven Universe, and The Legend of Korra all had these things as key components of their shows and never received criticism to the degree that this show has from the far-right and gamer dudebros. If you think including any characters other than straight white males or hypersexualized white women is inherently having an agenda, then you probably need to re-evaluate and develop some more logically-sound political beliefs.
Toki o kakeru shôjo (2010)
Pretty good.
I thought the pacing of this movie was a bit slow, but it was still pretty entertaining. It was almost like 3 movies mashed into one, being that there are three main focuses. The young woman who stars as the main character desires to find a mysterious man from her mother's past, find her father, and pursue a romantic interest simultaneously. The thing is, it manages to focus on all of these plot lines succinctly and fully rounds out the characters. The only the thing I would note is the relatively low production quality and often cheesy special effects. I would say it's more of a great work of storytelling rather than a great work of cinematography.