Recommendation: Anime News Network No Game No Life Zero Review

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the crew of Otaku;Hourly was invited by Sentai Filmworks to attend the English premiere of No Game No Life Zero at the Los Angeles Anime Film Festival as press — which I couldn’t attend thanks to a nasty cold.

 The movie premieres in theaters October 5th, so this was a good opportunity for the crew to get their first impressions out there early for listeners waiting on the American release.

While the official Otaku;Hourly coverage has not come out yet (the episode will be out September 20th at 9:00 PM PST), I did, in my free time, stumble across a fascinating, earlier review of the film on Anime News Network written by Kim Morrissy. The review gives a good breakdown not on just the film itself, but also how the movie stacks up to the original series.

No Game No Life Zero is an oddity: an anime movie prequel to a series is not commonplace in the anime industry. Originally, I had no idea what to expect of this film. Upon reading this article, I was shocked to learn that the film’s tone and presentation managed to articulate the core themes of the series perhaps even better than the original series.

Morrissy argues that the tonal differences of the film, featuring a much bleaker past in both narrative and visual style as compared to the show, lends favor to the movie’s overall theme of humanity triumphing over all odds. Flawed, sympathetic characters stand in for Sora and Shiro. Victory is most certainly not assured.

While this comes at the sacrifice of the unique feel that the original series used to pull in its original audience, the review advocates that this change is welcome for a standalone prequel. This film may be a departure from the series, but it only serves to strengthen the franchise as a whole, providing depth its storytelling.

All I know is, once I recover fully, I’ll be excited to see the film for myself in theaters!

Please feel free to check out the article here

Tune in next time, everybody!

— The Dex —

A Call from Mother’s Basement

Over the last week, I’ve been recovering from a nasty cold that, sadly, prevented me from attending the Los Angeles Anime Film Festival. The story was that  Otaku;Hourly was invited by Sentai Filmworks to cover the No Game No Life Zero red carpet event, which was a huge deal to the crew and I. So they went to the big premiere while I rested at home, watching videos on my laptop.

Fortunately, our story doesn’t end there. It was that night that Jonathan “Joestar” Beltran, our host, called me up and put a familiar voice on the phone. To my surprise, it was none other than Geoff Thew, professional dirtbag and mind behind Mother’s Basement.

After wishing me to get well soon, with my voice sounding like the Godfather’s, and bonding over our mutual hatred for Sword Art Online, I broke the news to him about the newly announced “Seven Senses of the Re’Union” anime (which I relayed appropriately as Sword Art Online Anohana crossover — see this Crunchyroll article for why). Promising me some very angry tweets, he handed the phone back to Jonathan and my little story comes to a close. All and all, that made up for a night of coughing my lungs out.