No, it’s not the End of Days.

It’s the beginning of Exam Season, that wonderful time of the semester when everyone has at least one major exam per week for the next five weeks.  Aren’t you glad you chose Mines?

Starting this week, the Club enters Movie Madness Mode™.  As such, we start each showing with two episodes of our Repeater series, and then we show a movie we pulled out of some godforsaken pit.  Come hear me rant and/or rave about what the Senior Staff would dare to call “entertainment,” won’t you?

The Repeater for Fall 2011 is…

Now, for those of you who decided to live under a proverbial rock for the last 9 months (and you’d have probably been smart for that), this show was broadcast in Spring 2011 during the noitaminA block in Japan.  This block is known for some great shows, like Eden of the East, and some pretty bad ones.

The basic gist of the story could be summarized with some tactful word choice, but why do that when you can have a British sing-a-long instead?  That aside, there’s good animation, interesting characters, a decent amount of action, a plot that stays more-or-less on target, and some economic philosophy.  Yes, [C] has something for everyone.

[C] 1 – 2The series starts innocuously enough, with a rather fugly-looking fellow trying to get money out of an ATM machine.  All of his credit/debit cards are tapped out, except for the creepy one in the very back of his wallet.  An equally creepy English (and actually very good English) voice emits from the ATM asking the man if he would “like to make a deal” and if he would “like to choose an opponent.”  Stuff happens, soundtracks begin to play, more stuff happens, we meet some main characters, and we arrive at the theme of the show:

Episode 2 whisks us away to another dimension called “The Financial District,” where people literally put their futures on the line for wealth in battles called Deals.  Just as with everything else in [C], the Deals are based almost completely upon money.  The word “bankrupt” is used only once this episode, but it sounds far more serious than it would in real life (and that’s already very serious).  Shit gets real pretty quick during this episode, but of course, you already know how the Deal is going to end.  The rest of the episode is devoted to character introductions and development, as well as the increasing oddity of the Midas Money that seems to be floating around.

The OP seems very creative, since it expresses exactly what each region’s currency has come to represent.  Anyone who studies global history, as well as micro- and macro-economics should have fun with the creator’s ideas in this show (be on the lookout for a post on this later on).  The ED is decidedly more…abstract.  However, this shouldn’t surprise you, since the ED is played by School Food Punishment, who also played the ED for Eden of the East.  However, there’s already one thing that bugs me about this show.  There are patches here and there where the character animation just falls off a cliff, and of all things, it happens to ONLY Kimimaro and Masakaki, the two characters with (as of yet) the most screen time.  This creates a huge contrast when you consider the effort put into every other aspect of the animation.  Besides that, [C] starts off pretty strong, so it should provide a strong counterweight against the movies this semester (yeah, that doesn’t sound ominous at all).

Precure Movie 3 – All Stars DX

I don’t think you could make this movie more magical if you stuffed a unicorn full of glitter and used it as a piñata.  Basically, this is a crossover movie of all of the Precure series (there are 3).  Of course, this means all of the (already defeated) villains return to herpa derp with the help of their new master, Black-Hole-SAMA.

At this point, shit goes down, and all TWENTY-ONE Precure girls have to transform.  Subsequently, the baddies blow up things (with DARK crystals!), and the girls are divided into 3 groups and each transported to a different set of baddie realms: a dessert, a tundra, and a game board that basically plays like Super Mario Party (and is incidentally the most entertaining).  The next 40 minutes is watching the camera bounce around between the realms.  Meanwhile, in the “real world,” thousands of fur balls stall for time as some of the other baddies search for the Prism Flower, the magical object that that not only protects the Earth from super-special evil, but also connects the human and various furball worlds.

After some stubborn togetherness talk, all the Precure groups bust out of the separate realms and team up to (again) defeat the bad guys.  Using the power of Black-Hole-Sama, the baddies power up, but their individual badassery is no match for tag-team bullocks.

It is only after all the baddies are defeated that the true source of this studipity reveals it-(him?)-self: Black-Hole-SAMA!!!

After the surrounding ozone layer is depleted, the Precure girls lose their powers and the Prism Flower is revealed:

While the true villain ever-so-dramatically reaches around to crush the Prism Flower, the fur balls reveal that they can use the last of their power (which they’ve conveniently saved until just now) to allow the girls to once again transform.  However, this comes with a price: the connection to the various worlds and the human world would be cut, and therefore the fur balls would instantly return to their respective worlds.

But the girls (eventually) understand that it’s the Earth or them, so they go to use the fur balls’ power, but the Prism Flower has a better idea.  It uses its own power to send everyone in the world Miracle Stars (which are basically the cheap glow sticks sold during Disney On Ice) so that they can donate their energy to the girls.  The girls transform once more (in an ever more dramatic sequence), combine their powers and blow away Black-Hole-SAMA, never to be seen again.

With that, the ED rolls.

In the obligatory Epilogue, a Miracle Star randomly beans one of the former Precure girls, giving the glimmer of hope to a later reunion.

Well, I can’t say much about the shows themselves, having never personally seen them, but I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that it’s their favorite show (I think she’s 4).  That aside, I think the most amazing part of this movie is the OP, considering that I was only able to find a competent Hi10p video player configuration in the last 3 days.  The OP (once it properly played) was actually pretty amazing-looking.  Someone high up Tomoei must believe in this franchise, because it’s quite rare to see something like this have such off-the-charts animation quality.  The best way to summarize this is to compare it to a bomb exploding in super-slow motion: there’s a ton of collateral damage, but the physics and details are breathtaking.

To those of you who stayed for the entire showing, come by to grab your permission slips.  I’m sure that you’ll all be excused from your exams on grounds of insanity.