Un Ciudadano Cualquiera (Desarmando a Podemos)

The Mission Movie Review

An interesting setting and story where it´s first act spirals out of control to later have a fine movie about social comentary about the nature of man to be hostile towards the unknown and the destruction that leaves in it´s wake... all in the name of god.

The main story fallows a jesuit cult on a mission to annex the local natives in south america into christianity lead by father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons); later a mercenary and enslaver named  Rodrigo Mendoza (Robert De Niro) is asked, in order to atone for his sins, to join the mission and assist the priests... he later does and ultimately helps himself and the jesuits, has well has bonding with the local natives. But at the moment of truth, Cardenal Altamirano is sent by the vatican to choose what should be done about the mission when the local area gets under Portuguese control (witch allow slavery); under pressure... the Cardenal is forced to choose between two evils, either allow the Portuguese armies to enslave the local indigenous or allow the jesuit mission to continue and have the portuguese condemn their order, thus crippling the catholic church...

One negative is the first half, is unfortunately crushingly boring because of the cliched love triangle between Mendoza, his brother and his wife... witch it was built to be a dramatic moment to have Mendoza feeling guilt over his own actions after killing his brother in a duel for later in the film, but it lasts nothing; it all takes less than 5 minutes and immediately later we have the main story picking flight... I think this would have worked better if they have given it more time or maybe not show it at all instead have the character showed to be tortured it would have worked slightly better in my opinion.

I don´t like to be hard on this movie because I believe that the rest of it is very good; not great but very good indeed... I like the struggle the jesuits have to protect the indigenous from slavery after they take away their safety because of the Treaty of Madrid where they pass down under control of the portuguese, I like that the characters are each doing what they think is best for the locals and they don´t get on each others way (even if they don´t agree with each other), that is rare to see in this kind of story. The cinematographic is great, the music is great and the acting is good has well.

The Mission is a good movie that has plenty of good things going for it, it has a bad start with some unnecessary things that I honestly don´t think we needed to know and the main conflict is actually quite good...

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Hello reders... thank you for your patience!

I am still putting a few things together all the while still working on the comic... a few more reviews are underway!

Stay tuned

10 Anime cliches you may have noticed + Update

Finally!

It´s been a long time I know... you probably thought I died, that I had given up... but not really.

I just took longer to come back, babies, that´s it; I am sorry for keeping some of you fellows waiting for a next post but here I am and ready to give you readers some more needed material of this blog.

So... let´s do this shall we?

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I love anime (I may have made that obvious... maybe not), some of my favorite movies and TV shows are anime made by talented people from the land of the rising sun, however, just like in many other type of productions there always seem to be patterns and aspect about the material I see in anime that just tends to... well carry over.

There are plenty of cliches in anime but I´ll just name the most prominent ones in my opinion.... keep in my mind that I do considered a fine thing to be entertained by some of this traits even though some do get pretty tiering to see so often.

Let´s count 10 of them you may have noticed...

1. Hot Springs Moment: It seems to have become a common thing to have this kind of fan services is anime to the point that is pretty much expected... in an anime where you hit the 7th or 10th episode there is a hot spring break where we get to see the girls naked for extra fan service... it would´t be so bad if it was used has an opportunity to develop character but instead it´s used for prep-falls, slapstick comedy and other similar attempts at humor... with the obvious propose of just having the girls show off some skin.

This have been seen on pretty much every anime out there... including Pokemon!

I have seen cases where the hot spring scene has been used for some developed character traits like in "No Game No Life" but they are so few in far between that I just hope that more could be done often.

2. The Perverted Character: Jiraya (Naruto), Master Roshi (Dragon Ball), Sanji (One Pice), Miroku (Inuyasha)... need I to go on...? To be fair I am not really that bothered by this trend has much has you might think has it often leads to some funny moments and not all the character are necessarily males.

But when, they miss they often fall on the offensive side or just annoying bumbling moment where I just feel deeply embarrassed... like is the kind of thing that makes me glad I don´t share this hobby with people I know; another problem with this is that after a while with the character you pretty much anticipate a joke to show up the moment a steaming hot girl shows up.

Again, is not a cliche I am totally bothered by but if you have watch plenty of anime like I have... you will probably notice plenty of time where it just back fires badly and just have to turn your head to look the other way...

3. Far back, with the window to the left: Ok... now this one is a complete mystery to everybody, why is this trend so common in animes? what do they represent? IF it does actually represent something...

This trend is mostly noticed in school drama anime or just a plain old class room scene that involves a main character... I would be here forever if I started to count every single anime that has this cliche! But why? well my guess is that it may be used has a way to represent that the MC is looking for "something more" (witch in and off itself is a cliche BTW)... truth is that is a complete mystery why is there, it adds nothing to the story when you think about it and we have just grow numb to it´s presence to the point that it´s pretty much expected from every anime we see.

It´s seen it pretty much every anime ever made!

4. Out of control Fan service: There are few exception to the rules of the fallowing thing I am going to say but when there is a female character in an anime, there is a sure grantee that the creators will allow you to get your rocks off from them.

Has a straight male, I am naturally attracted to the female physique, but really, there is only so much I can take before feeling like this is getting in my way of getting to know the character´s personality... witch in my opinion is part of the attractive of a female character... are we supposed to just like them for their body? I don´t know about you... but isn´t that why we have ecchi and hentai; it´s ok to see does things and like them for what they are but when I am watching an actual series with a progressive story I don´t want to see the women used like that... naturally there are times when this is warranted and actually welcome, but it becomes too much to swallow when it´s done over and over again... example? Oh no! a guy slips and accidentally places his mouth on a girls vagina or something like that; later you have a scene where the same guy catches a different girl from falling and puts one hand in one of her tits, oh boy! What a series of predicaments!

I love sexy girls in anime has much has the next guy... but is it too much to ask for balance?

I can appreciate fan service when it serves to get me closer to understand a character... but this moments are few and far between that they are obviously shoved into the story just because they think is funny, and it can when its done right.

I am not a big ecchi fan and that´s because I want to fallow a story with characters and a conflict, ecchi is just light hearted hentai... nothing more and I would appreciate if this method could be used better in story driven anime.

5. Harems in general: If there are any exceptions to the rule here I haven´t seen any, usually is filled with stereotypes for the main character to choose, and usually they are just so boring to watch... why is that? I know many people who actually like this kind of story, personally, I don´t get it.

For does unaware, Harem is a sub genera where is one guy surrounded by a group of smoking hot girls, in the oposite case (girl surrounded by hot boys) is called "reverse harem"; usually composed of love stories or slice of life components.

The main problem I have with this kind of shows is that (aside from being crushingly boring), is that pretty much all of the characters are carbon copy of each other and I ultimately find myself saying "oh yeah, that´s the blonde one right?" or "Oh right! the one with green eyes" and the main dude is usually a skinny looking kid who is socially awkward yet still has all this girls wanting to help the guy get his dick wet... it´s painfully stupid.

Every time I give a chance to one harem anime, the farther I get is 3 or 2 episodes before stoping altogether from continuing... I want to like one harem anime and say "hey this is fun!" but I just can´t because they are so cliched and filled with bad humor that I can´t swallow. There are times when I find one girl whose personality I like and can be pretty fun then, but she is usually the secondary character that shows up for a short moment in each episode.

I KNOW there can be good harem animes out there, but they are just so rare... and there are so many that fallow the same stereotypes that it usually ends up feeling like I´m watching the same anime over and over again...

6. Forced Yaoi/Yuri: Now before I move into topic I´ll clarify something, I don´t mind homosexuals... I know people in real life that are gay and I get along with them... Now on to the topic; There are animes out there intended to tell a yuri or yaoi love story and that´s cool, the problem is when we have two clearly stablished straight characters that are forcefully hugging, blushing at each other and all that...

I think this is done exclusively for just appeal. These clichés usually go to a guy dresses has a girl and is confused has such by a guy and the guy gets a crush on him... or the likes, sometimes it happens on friendship moments that the presentation is made kinda like it´s a love scene thus giving conflicting information; again, the problem is not being gay, but how they place this moment in such an awkward way that it´s just like "huh?".

Now I have seen moments where this kind of jokes work making for very funny reactions to situations and thats precisely the thing that makes this moments work, is about showing a certain character trait in a way that highlights that about him/her that may not have known otherwise.

It´s not a bad thing to have homosexual characters in a story and if you are misunderstanding my point then please read again, because I was never against homosexuality, my point is about forcing yaoi and yuri in scenes when trying to be funny or represent friendship. I have seen animes of yuri and yaoi love stories with does elements and there they work because of the characters themselves are meant to be like that and there are some animes of this nature that I really like, examples? Straberry Panic, Junjou Romantica and Kanazuki no Miko, not exactly great animes in my opinion but I do consider these to be good shows with yaoi and yuri couples has the focus.

7. The Bland Main Character: This cliche is pretty much EVERYWHERE in anime!

The main character of an anime is most of the time a guy, with next to not remarkable personalities, blander than bread and accompanied by a more colorful cast of characters than him... it´s the painful truth.

The point is to have us has audiences to reflect ourselves on the main character but you know what´s  better than that? to watch a character that we can admire and relate by who he is, or simply someone we can understand and learn about trough their journey... Many animes commit this sin of making the main character bland and is painful to watch, I can spent plenty of time naming shows with this kind of characters because there are just so many, but when you watch plenty anime like I do you can tell the moment they show up, and to me... is getting painfully obvious and it drops my interests remarkably.

8. Recycled Ideas: We live in a time where new ideas for stories (weather are movies, comics, series, etc...) are very hard to come by, because many things have been done already; believe me I understand that perfectly... but that doesn't meen that there can´t be passion for telling a story or a certain comment.

Most animes take from a concept done from a different story that did it before, and is not trying to tell  it in a different way or giving it a unique spin with their own take on it but instead it just repeat that story over again... is almost like they write the same script at times and that is inexcusable.

Is one thing to be inspired by a story and having it adding to your own ideas but when you take that completely away for a parrot respiting a song then what´s the point? I KNOW is hard to be original now days, but that doesn't mean there can´t be anything special and new to offer... because for every re-done concept there is always someone out there who wants to give us something special, but sometime people just have to play it safe don´t they...? and if "otakus" just accept these has "ok"... then we´ll never see risks...

9. Fillers: For many this is the ultimate anime killer, there is nothing worst than having a series stuck in limbo just because you are waiting for a manga to catch up... although I personally don´t watch this kind of popular animes, I can understand why many are turned off by this problem.

It´s a buzz killer to have a storyline being abruptly stopped just to have a completely new story having nothing that we care to know being told, I don´t know how this kind of meetings go around in the development but is almost like there is no end to them... I cannot believe there are people who can ACTUALLY put up to this.

I am sure there is a balance somewhere out there for this kind of practices and I don´t pretend to know the answers to it but this is why I find animes like Naruto, One Pice and many other Shonnen Jump productions unwatchable, has fun and good has they are story wise, is a killer that their fillers are so long and boring... but writers and animators have to eat too...

10. Nothing happening: But to me, the worst thing any anime can have is to have no plot, conflict or story to tell... is the ultimate killer and sadly it has become more prominent than ever in the latests seasons.

When you have a series depending solely on how much you like the cast of characters, well you better do your homework because this kind of things are very easy to screw up... I know there can be animes with minimal conflict that can actually work like Watamote or (to a certain extent) Lucky Star... these anime relay on funny and likable characters indeed; but they also have certain conflicts to deal with even with little story but we find these characters fascinating that we want to see them to the end.

However, many animes really don´t get that, this kind of stories relay on awkward humor, dumb dialog and clumsy execution that I sometimes wonder if the people who write this are either forced to or just have never really fallowed a story progression... it can be any number of things and I think is painfully obvious they have these stories done in one draft.

Usually this animes come in the form of "slice of life, drama, high school or ecchi" and there is just no character development at all here, making for the entire viewing experience boring... and boring your audience is the worst thing you can do...

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Hello again guys...

I am very sorry about the long time I was gone, but I have been so busy this last few weeks; I have been behind schedule to the point that I am already behind with my comic project... I wanted to have a part of it done and make it presentable before the end of May, but it´s got to be pushed back to sometime around summer... is really that complicated but I am just one guy and I am only human...

On top of that, in early may I am traveling to Barcelona for the for the Sports Film Festival where a short I made about a year from now has been nominated and I am assisting so (again) I am gonna  be away for a while.

I´ve also been planing on reviewing more movies and games... but popular movies like "Unfriended" have not reached here in my country and I haven´t been able to play "Bloodborne" witch is a title I´ve been itching to play, but I already wasted my money on "Mortal Kombat X" has a b-day present for my brother (maybe I´ll review that instead around this time).

There is much more going on but I am still here and I am still pushing forward... This is one of the longest post I´ve putted since I started to do this and every time I write a post I am taking away time for my other project witch seems to be taking forever to finish on it´s own... yet I am still very happy with the story I´ve wrote, I want to tell it and I am glad of being able to do so without any outside interference.

I´ll try to finish the first chapter before summer is over (maybe around july or august if you want an specific date)

Thank you again for checking in

Stay tuned for more updates and posts!

PS: I´ll try to make short reviews in the mean time...