[Reckoner]

Originally Posted by Goggen

...because I'm sorry, but "subjective opinion" can only excuse so much nonsense. Exactly where in the movie were Londoners portrayed as "the biggest weirdos ever"? Who are you referring to? The cab driver who couldn't read their minds and ended up driving them to the wrong hotel? The helpful receptionist? The stage manager who couldn't pronounce "Ho-kago" correctly, much like any native English speaker not familiar with Japanese? There's the sushi bar owner who mistook them for a different band, I suppose, so that's possibly one.

I gotta say, it's quite funny that you'd complain about "Engrish" when they did in fact cast native English speakers. They weren't all good actors, I'll say that much, but there was no Engrish. Apart from that of the Japanese characters, of course.

I felt there seemed something very off about the English speakers. A bit monotone and uninspired, and for some reason they seemed to talk quieter than our Japanese VA's which is a bit of why I couldn't even tell they were native. I've been to London, I know how British people speak there and to me I didn't really feel they talked like London citizens at all. Granted my use of the term engrish is probably going too far since it wasn't exactly that, so I'll correct myself there.

Anyways, I felt the English people throughout the movie either were acting really stupid (Like the sushi guy or the "BRAVOOO" man) or just seemed completely devoid of life. They didn't breath any air into the culture, they didn't even feel like human beings. It was a foreign land, but the movie seemed to forget these are actually people.

Originally Posted by teh_nubkilr

Being asked to watch something against your will is relevant to discussion. I said to my friends that my review is merely an opinion...whereas I would recommend it, I would not force them to watch it.

Not really relevant to what my opinion is here, my opinion wouldn't be any different if I never knew about K-ON before and randomly waltzed in here.

Originally Posted by teh_nubkilr

I will continue to contend that only a qualitative review is truely subjective; a quantitative review requires a set of standardised criteria, and would contribute to my lack of usage. For online poll, such as those found here, the values I give aren't based on a cumulative score based on a set of criteria, but rather, a percentile. For me, 9/10 means "better than at least 90% of things I've seen".

It's just a number. The words are what's more important here. And no, I don't agree at all with this line of thinking, but seeing as this is off topic lets not go here.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

@Reckoner So yeah, I felt this movie was much more respectful than most anime productions in how they portrayed people from non-Japanese nations.

Read above. But in any case they certainly could've done much worse. Rather than downright insulting, it was more like a disappointing exploration of another culture.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

@ReckonerNow, I did find it a bit strange that you had a lot of scenes where HTT are speaking 90% (or more) Japanese to the Brits, and the Brits are speaking 100% English back. It's kind of like watching people speak pass one another. It was kind of weird to see this continually go on, and both sides just sort of intuit what the other side meant.

Well these are the scenes I kind of felt were portraying the Brits like blubbering idiots. While on one hand I realized this was supposed to be a joke, the way a guy would suddenly be like "RICE!!!!!" it also makes it seem a little too foolish for my POV.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

@ReckonerI kind of expected the girls to be clinging tightly to an English/Japanese dictionary, and using it to form short, concise (and a bit clunky, but understandable) English sentences. What we got instead was a bit strange, although in fairness I haven't personally dealt with language barriers like this much in life.

Is this what you mean by the Brits seeming weird? Because otherwise, I think the movie just presented them as generally mellow, friendly, welcoming people. If anything, I thought it was a pretty positive assessment of the Brits.

I'm not trying to state something like "this isn't what happens in real life!" I just didn't appreciate the portrayal of the culture of the Brits in general, especially having been there. I think there's a whole lot more to their culture and its people than that, and this was an opportunity to go past the typical "Oh weird foreign land and weird foreign people" and actually show some culture to Japan. I see it mostly as a missed opportunity.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

@ReckonerAnyway, some of your other criticisms I agree with, but those same issues didn't bother me quite as much. Ultimately, how much a person likes the K-On Movie will depend a lot on how much that person likes its characters. This is a very character-focused work - Plot and Setting are occasionally important, but they're not consistently important like Characters are.

Of course characters can make or break a show. I never liked Yui and always thought she dragged down the show a bit for me. I did like Mio originally and I do like Azu-nyan to a point, but the chemistry of the entire cast together is what is at play here and so it's hard for me to get into the fun of it in the first place.

However I will say that one of the problems I mentioned, which is something I commented on about towards the end of Working!'s second season was that the humor ran past its comedy lifetime (The parts that ever could be amusing to me like Mio's personality to get constantly frightened of things for example which is still being played nonstop in this movie). It was too much of the same IMO.

Originally Posted by Night_Music

"I never got it." This explains everything. Saying something sucks just because you don't understand it is quite "shallow". Plus if you know from the start that you would hate the experience of watching it, then you would do everything to free yourself from the 2 hours of watching some nonsense plotless movie involving cute girls, and their silly antics in some foreign country. Why bother wasting 2 hours of your time? Save yourself the horror. (I almost broke though the door, just to escape from watching Justin Bieber's, Never say Never movie.)

Now I see where that quote came from because I actually bothered to look, and my my it seems to be taken quite a bit out of context.

I said that I never got what the exact importance of music was to this story. And I still don't, the main story of the franchise being told here could've swapped out the hobby for just about anything and I feel the crux of the enjoyment for most of the fans (As Vexx put it, the "in-betweens") would not have changed. Basically it never relied on it. Yes this is a criticism that has been done to death (Although I think for me it's fair since I was perpetrating this since this show aired a few episodes in), but I still think it's a valid question to ask.

Originally Posted by teh_nubkilr

Reckoner: I am quite curious to know if there were any redeeming points about the movie from your perspective. You maintain that you've "seen worse", but that's hardly a satisfactory response. Again, your review is indicative of a lower score. Since you have given it a 3, I'm now looking for a justification of that: none of that "I've seen worse" business, but rather, what aspect, no matter how trivial, that made the movie a 3 instead of a 1.

Since you seem so hung up on it.

Above average production values
I don't hate the entire cast, I mentioned liking Mio and Azu-nyan.
Wasn't downright insulting, just boring.

If you're curious what actually would earn a lower score from it's something like the Unlimited Blade Works movie, which calling it a movie in the first place is too kind since it was more a slide show than anything.