Also, I was wondering why you wanted to change my screens so badly >_> BTW SK, have you seen the Air movie? While I thought it made leaps and bounds in improvement, I can definitely see where it wouldn’t follow through for some, and I’m interested in your opinion on the movie.

As for the rest, well, I haven’t seen them xD I’ve been busy preparing for the ACTs coming up and the recent model UN conference. But I will put FMP on my to-watch list, if not solely because everyone but me has seen it.

Maybe “pretentious” was a bit harsh on EoE, but it has been a while since I saw it, and I do remember not being terribly impressed with its story. So, in my eyes, EoE failed to connect me with its characters and plot. In my eyes, it fell short of its intentions, and those are the reasons why I think it did fall short overall. Obviously it is a contentious movie and everyone has a different opinion of it, but I really think it didn’t use its eccentricity well, as far as telling the story was concerned. Petite Cossette, on the other hand, did. It was bizarre, but rip away all its erratic visual effects, etc, and you’re still left with a clearly told supernatural romance/revenge story. IMO, the main difference between EoE and Petite Cossette is that EoE’s bizarreness hindered its story-telling, while Petite Cossette’s enhanced it.

“Well, since I haven’t seen FMP: TSR, I can’t really talk about how KyoAni did a better job with it.” – Kuma

If you liked the first FMP!, you really need to see it. It’s outstanding.

I think the thing with Outlaw Star is that it got a lot of people into anime, including many from our site IIRC. For all its flaws, Outlaw Star oozes with style and cool, making it a bit more than the sum of its parts. It’s one of those titles that can be hard for some to objectively review (kind of like Eva), myself included. For that reason, I’ll probably never review either title. If I had to, I’d probably give Outlaw Star a “7″, and EoE an “8″.

I agree with your comments about Outlaw Star.

End of evangelion presented beautiful and stunning images to tell a gripping story of a teenager, who is struggling to find out what is right for both him and the people in a world full of isolation and sorrow. Although the high abstract level does leave different impressions on viewers, which inevitably leads to different interpretations but there is nothing wrong with that. Meanings behind Shakespeare’s plays or dante’s poems are still being read differently after all. So is it ‘pretentious and too confusing-for-the-sake-of-it’, just because some of the viewers didn’t take much from it? I mean, I understand that viewers have the right to say that the symbolic images didn’t connect with them very well. But I think completely dismissing their effects over other viewers and the meanings they derived from that as prententious is going a bit far. And in my opinion, Le portrait de petite cossette was as confusing as end of eva with equally abstract images that serves to tell a story symbolically, so I’m also wondering how you’d rate those two visually stunning works so differently.