Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering an animated film from 2010. That movie is "Loups=Garous".
I'm gonna be honest with you, guys, I know almost nothing about this movie. The only bit of information that I can tell you about it is that this thing is apparently based off a novel with a similar name. Now obviously, I've never read the novel, so any comparisons in terms of it's loyalty to the source material are gonna be completely null and void. Not that it matters anyway, since I care more about whether or not a movie can stand on it's own merits rather than being compared to it's novel counterpart.
I am gonna say, though, that the reason why I bought this movie is because of what I read on the back of the DVD case, because the premise sounded really cool. Now from what I read, the movie takes place around a post-virus world where the population has been dramatically decreased. And when a young girl, along with a group of other kids, decides to take a step forward outside into the world, she finds out that someone is murdering children. Why are children being murdered? I don't know. But apparently, they have to unravel some sort of mystery as to why that is.
Now again, I really do like this premise, and I'm hoping that the movie is gonna live up to it's rather promising premise. However, as has been proven in this series, awesome premises don't make for good movies. However, it *can* still prove itself to be an amazing movie. And the only way I'm gonna find out if this sucker is any good at all, is if I shut up and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Loup=Garous".
8 minutes later
OK, guys, I know this is still a bit early in this movie, but I am gonna let you guys know that the dub here, at least so far, is a bit...lifeless. Granted, it's still very early in this movie, so perhaps maybe the dub will get better as it goes on. But if it doesn't...then I'm probably gonna be stuck with this sort of lifeless dub for the next 90 minutes or so.
19 minutes later
I believe I may know why this dub feels lifeless, guys, and that has to do with it's dialogue. The dialogue in this movie feels incredibly stilted and unnatural. And the one character who's giving this off the most is whoever is voicing Mio Tsuzuki. She can never stay consistent with her tone and it's making her delivery come across as complete shit. I'm kinda hoping, maybe, that I'll actually get use to this stilted dialogue, but somehow, I don't really think that's gonna happen.
11 minutes later
You know, guys, out of all the things I was expecting from this movie, I wasn't expecting a musical montage. I will say, though, that the song here isn't too bad. It's not great, mind you, but at least it's fairly decent. So...I guess that's one positive that I can pull from this movie, so it's better than nothing at all.
20 minutes later
Guys, I understand that this movie is trying to build some sort of tension...but honestly, I just don't care. This movie has already went off the rails rather quickly, and considering how bad the English dub is, I'm just losing more interest as the movie passes on by, and quite honestly, I just don't see it getting any better.
20 minutes later
Why the hell isn't this movie finished yet? Seriously, guys, you have no idea how boring this fucking movie is. I really thought this movie was gonna be a lot better than this, but...no. It really is almost making no sense, and at this point, I honestly just want this thing to end as soon as possible!
The Review
Oh...thank you god it's done. Well, guys, that was "Loups=Garous". I'm just gonna shut this thing off here...OK. Good lord...um, where the hell do I even start with this thing? I really thought this movie was gonna pull off something cool with it's premise, but...well, it's another one of those cases where I was right. This premise sounded cool on paper, but it then turned into...this, and yeah, this thing kinda sucks. Actually no, it doesn't "kinda" suck, it *really* sucks.
So...I guess I should try to get into this movie and see if I can explain how exactly this thing fumbles with it's own premise. I'm gonna start with writing. And that's gonna be kind of a challenge in of itself, because the writing for this thing is just all over the place. Not just as a story, but the pacing itself is not very consistent either. It feels like the writers for this movie wanted to make this feel like something bigger, but the problem with that is that it tries to do *too* much within such a short runtime. This movie clocks in at about an hour 41 minutes, and it really feels over-bloated to where you're not able to digest enough of the movie's world and it's characters. I feel like this if this were an actual series that lasted about a season or two, then *maybe* this thing could've been more fleshed out. But unfortunately, because the movie is stuck with this short runtime, you don't really have that kind of luxury to spend time with all of it's characters and give them the development that they so desperately needed.
Same goes with the world-building of this movie. I would've love to have seen more of how this world came to be after this virus ended up claiming millions of lives with all of these cameras monitoring everybody in their daily lives, but they don't really explore that enough until towards the very end of the movie. And by the way, without going into spoilers, it ends on a *very* anti-climatic setting. I'll just leave it at that and move on. Now to be honest, the movie felt kinda plotless for a while. Where we see our main characters getting together at an outside place where Kono lives at, while they look after a sick girl named Yoko, and Mio's talking about her passion of wanting to start up a rock band. Which then leads into this montage where we see them getting together on certain nights at the same place just messing around with their rock band idea. And I would probably be fine with this if, one, it actually went somewhere...which it doesn't. Or two, again, have this set up in a series so that we can see them having fun with their idea instead of having a pointless montage that serves no purpose other than to pad the film out to it's hour and 41 minute runtime.
Since I sorta touched upon the characters for a bit, I may as well just come out and say that all of our characters here feel very flat and one-dimensional. Almost none of them any of sort real depth to their characters, with *maybe* the exception of Kono. Kono actually has some sort of backstory to it's character, but even then, it's not really all that interesting because Kono only has one type of personality, which is basically acting monotonely depressed. I know Kono isn't *really* depressed, I'm just saying that's how they act is all. Makino really doesn't do much of anything outside of having a potential love interest in Kono. And it's kinda sad in her case because we mostly follow her throughout the film, and yet her character depth has all of the personality of dried up paint. Mio is the tech hacker, and yet she disappears for a good portion of the film after the movie fakes her death after an explosion from a bomb. And Myao is there simply because fuck you, that is why. Yeah, I know she's suppose to be part of this group, but she really has no kind of establishing character motivation other than simply being there as Mio's friend. So...yeah, our characters are all flat and boring as shit.
And that's the best way I can summarize the writing in this movie. It's just boring as shit. Like I mentioned earlier, it tries to do too much with it's story. And if it had been given a proper series instead of a movie, it probably would've been better in terms of pacing and telling it's story. But as is, the writing here is just a mess, which ultimately gives us a bad movie. And to make it worse, we have a really bad English dub. Now admittedly, it's dub is nowhere near as bad as, say, "The Girl In The Shell", however, that isn't really saying a whole lot, considering how poorly put together that movie's dub was in general. But as for this film's dub, it really isn't that good. A lot of the acting here feels phoned in, so naturally, none of them put in any real effort into making this dub sound believable. The one actress who phones it in the most is the actress who voices Mio. For, like, the first half of the film, it sounded like she had no idea what she was doing when she was voicing her character. The only two types of voices that I could hear her give out are sarcasm and being energetic, and none of it sounds natural in any way. So in one instance shortly after they first meet Myao, Mio ends a sentence, and it sounded like she was trying to awkwardly answer a question rather than finish a sentence properly. Trust me, it sounds *worse* when you actually listen to it because it honestly sounds like the actress herself has no idea what the fuck kind of delivery she's suppose to give out.
Now admittedly, after Mio does come back in the second half of the film, the actress did try to make her sound a little bit more tolerable. However, it was just a case of too little, too late. And even then, it wasn't gonna save this dub either way, since it wasn't very good at all. Now admittedly, I can't entirely fault the voice acting here, mostly because you can only do so much when you're given a script that's written really poorly. And unsurprisingly, none of the cast here could make this script work in their favor. So yeah, the acting here for this dub sucks. The good news, however, is that if you are not into bad English dubs, then there is an option on the DVD where you can switch it over to the subtitled version with the Japanese audio. Granted, I don't think it's gonna fix the writing much at all, but at least you won't have to risk running into a bad dub. So, it's just something that you have to take for what it's worth.
The animation here is pretty good, as is the art-style. The studios responsible for making this movie are known as Production I.G and TransArts. And while I've never heard of TransArts before in my life, I do know a little bit more about Production I.G. They've made a *lot* of good-looking stuff over the years. Granted, I personally don't think they're as good as some other Japanese animation studios like TMS, Studio Ghibli, and Madhouse as a few examples, but they are very competent in what they make, and this movie is no exception. All of the characters have a unique style to them, which helps make this movie stand out a little bit more. The CG here is decent for what it is, at least for a movie released in 2010 anyway. If I were to compare the CG to today's standards, I would say that it has aged slightly. Still though, the CG here is decent for what it is, so at least it's something.
Sound-mix here is mixed really well. I do want to touch upon the music, though, for a little bit. Because, as I was doing the small amount of research on this movie, I found out that the music here was done by a Japanese rock band by the name of Scandal. Mind you, I believe there's only about 3 songs in the entire movie that's performed by them, and by themselves, the songs are OK. Granted, it's not something that I'm dying to re-listen to again, but I can at least say that the music here isn't bad for what it is. Now who knows? Maybe this group has put out some better songs than this, and if I ever get around to it, maybe I'll give some more of their music a listen to at some point. But anyway, I can at least say that the songs here are decent. Though personally, I don't think we needed them as montages for this film because, as I stated earlier, it takes away any of the development we might've had for our characters. But anyway, the music here from this group is decent.
So overall, guys, when everything is said and done, am I able to recommend "Loups=Garous"? Um...no. Unless maybe if you watched it with the Japanese audio with English subtitles and you just ignore this English dub, you may have somewhat of a better viewing experience. Though I can't guarantee that it will save the film's writing any better, because the story here just feels kinda lifeless and rushed, and it probably would've been salvaged better had this thing been, like, a one season series rather than being a movie. I can see that there's *some* potential here for an amazing movie, but it honestly kinda squandered that when they decided to not flesh almost any of it's characters out or make the story itself really interesting. And considering I paid $20 for this thing at a last year convention, I feel a little bit ripped off. Now I totally understand that's probably my fault for spending that much on it, but the premise I read on the back of the case sounded *really* cool, and I really wanted to like it...but it just didn't deliver on that promise. So yeah, I can't really recommend this movie to you guys at all. It just doesn't hold well as a movie, and there's no way I'm gonna be holding onto this thing for my DVD collection. So...with that in mind, I'm gonna go and watch something better. And you know what? There is actually one movie I can think of that was made by Production I.G that I do have in my DVD collection, which is called "A Letter To Momo". I'm gonna go and watch that thing, because it really is a rather good film, and I'm kinda in the mood to watch it again, what with it currently being summer and all. So I'm gonna go and do that next just so I can get the taste from this movie out of my mouth.
Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
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