Anime: Rakuen Tsuihou

The only reason I even bothered to check out this movie was because the name Urobuchi was slapped on. Who needs more reasons than that, right? I mean, ok, the trailer looked luring enough by showing a girl with long twin tails and super revealing clothes riding a mecha and blowing shit up. Clear evidence that it has to be a super mature and thought provoking title, like everything else Urobutcher was part of. Such as the mature themes of belly dancing in Gargantia, the archer class being made of archers in Fate / Stay Night, and who can forget the totally neutral Sybil System of Psycho Pass which turned super evil in the second season? Yup, depth and maturity awaits us in this movie too. Plus the whole thing was made in off-putting CGI, so it would be interesting to see how they are going to mess it up as they always do.

The movie begins by making sure that the audience will view the heroine as a sex object, rather than a character with modesty and respect. Here she is, in bikini on some beach, where a guy that is meant to be us, self-inserting our desires on him, is trying to seduce her.

Out of nowhere some virus pops up and she goes after it… completely naked. Yeah, who needs clothes to chase something in the virtual world, of course and it makes sense that she would be naked. Just don’t bother to ask why she needs to have a body at all and not to simply be sprites. Whoops, you shouldn’t have realized that, so here are some uncensored boobies with nipples to make sure it never crosses your mind.

She fails to stop the virus thingy so she goes to her superiors, by wearing her battle uniform. Because she totally needs clothes all of a sudden. Said uniform is equally revealing as her bikini from before, so basically she doesn’t hide a damn thing. Might as well be naked. So, her superiors look like Gods from various religions. Owww, such depth and maturity to just slap on theological imagery that has absolutely nothing to do with religion. This is totally no excuse to be pretentious by throwing in mambo jumbo terminology and make it look important because RELIGIONS MAAAAN.

She decides to get a physical body and go investigate this virus thing. Because so far she was just ethereal or something, living in a virtual world. Again, don’t ask why she needs a body, much less one that is barely dressed that goes totally commando when chasing viruses. To make sure such a thing will never cross your mind once again, feast your eyes on her new body, a loli one, with super extra long twin tails that would completely hinder all her movements if the movie gave a damn about physics. She is again butt naked, with uncensored nipples. Any reason for why it looks like a walking fapping excuse and not as a modestly dressed male agent or something like that? Kachin! Yes weeboos, this waifu can take the shape of any fetish you desire, go buy her merchandise.

So after she lands on the psysical realm and proving what a complete moe klutz that you would love to protect she is, an encounter with desert monsters takes place. She gets into her mecha, and flies into action! As usual, the CGI looks nice during battle scenes but the whole thing is completely ruined by the simple fact that the mecha is a ball with small legs and arms popping up around it. Jeez, this is a shape you give to small comical robot mascots, not to the titular robot. And it’s really hard to be excited about the action when the camera gives us gratuitous butt shots of a twin tail loli.

After the completely bogus battle, we get to see Rie Kugimiya doing her usual snict by voicing a stereotypical tsundere, constantly angry at a cool guy who clearly knows far more than her, but she is too much of a bitch to admit it. She would make a fine harem girl in any run of the mill school comedy. Just like any other identical role Rie Kugimiya did.

They go to a city where everybody wears worn out clothes and looks like a cowboy. She of course sticks out from everybody else with her ridiculous twin tails and fetish outfit to the point people can mistake her for a whore. It makes complete sense why some of them try to rape her in an alley. And turns out she is completely useless in hand-to-hand combat. Why did she even choose this pathetic frail body? Why was she even sent on this mission? Why couldn’t the cool guy be the protagonist? He is a much better character than this stupid stereotypical tsundere… Oh, I forgot, this is aimed at otakus. Nobody would watch the movie if that happened.

What follows after that is boring and almost plotless. The movie literally wastes over half of its duration on crap that would make you fall asleep. No interesting action, no deep themes explored, not even butt shots to prevent the otakus from playing with their smart phones for the next hour. Something about the physical world being a fun place and how the digital one is not, and the superiors being douchebags for simply having authority. I don’t care movie; you zoomed on the twin tailed loli’s ass, remember?

Eventually we get another flashy action scene, with that ridiculous roboballon fighting other roboballons. Just like before, there is no reason to care about a stereotypical tsundere in a lame robot fighting generic enemies. After that, the movie ends in a completely anti-climactic way. What a waste of 2 hours that was.

TL;DR: This movie is awful, even as a braindead action flick. It doesn’t even feel like it had anything related to what Urobutcher is notorious about. All the characters, past the main two, you see in the poster and the action scenes of the trailer don’t get more than a few minutes of screen time, and even then fail completely to be memorable or interesting. The theme of reality being better to fiction is as superficial as it gets, since the protagonist is a generic tsundere loli and the villains are stereotypicaly evil because AUTHORITY MAAAAN! Don’t waste your time and money on it. And in case you waste them, don’t forget to give it a very low score.