Grisaia: Phantom Trigger The Animation - Stargazer

Here is a movie that makes no sense but I enjoyed watching. A strange loli fighting force sent to bring in a comrade gone rogue - but the twist is, they aren't magical girls... they're MILITARY GIRLS! The combination is odd as hell. There is fanservice. There are nuns. The nuns are spec ops. The spec ops nuns takes down a cartel villa in the jungle. There are Enemy at the Gates style sniper games, we spend forever setting them up and they're over in like 5 minutes. There is a sniper loli from a pedagree of snipers whose father went rogue and killed his handlerfor causing the death of his wife, also a sniper. They check in with the audience every few minutes to make sure we understand that. Like really understand that. Everyone is a Loli, except the samurai handler guy who looks like a Loli. There is complex political intrigue as between military brass, the government, the handlers, and liasons between. For some reason a lesbian couple is not allowed to sortee and hangs back at "the academy", taking up about 10 minutes of screentime in this very short movie for no reason whatsoever to complain and get grub and fall asleep. Two chickens are beheaded, much to the loli's tutor's dismay - and yes, she's a loli, and a tutor, and she is permitted to sortee. Nearly dies when rappelling from helicopter. I would love to have an actual sniper, seal, or any vet chime on this thing as to realism because the feel of it is remarkably like watching black hawk down, saving private ryan, band of brothers etc... but with colorfully designed Lolis and many needless interruptions to insert Anime content into this spec ops movie. Put it this way - if they were to spin this out into a series and call it "The Bourne Identities of Jailbait Child Soldiers" I would watch it for the combat. The military jargon and dialogue, the use of weapons and spotting and scoping and ops and handlers and tactical maneouvers... it's like watching an "All Custscenes" video of a polished modern warfare style FPS game with Anime style graphics. I'm convinced such a title would actually be good now based on what I saw here. Frankly it's fucking cool. The art is great and the way they chose to direct it is definitely atypical in a good way. There just wasn't anything else going for this movie, unfortunately. I'm not familiar with the source material if there is any, so maybe that improves the viewing experience for those who are. I dunno, but I have to blast it sorry: Sound - first the good, the gunshots. The sound effects in the jungle. The dropped bodies through the scope that make no sound, the silence was excellent. The radio comms. The explosions, the helicopter, the rapelling from the helicopter - really, it's like they hired the people you would hire to do a warfare video game to do sound for this movie. Now, the bad - they did that whole edgy rock with vocals thing I just can't stand during a fight scene at one point. The only acceptable use of this for me personally was Don't Lose Your Way in Kill la Kill, and that was a very very different looking/feeling show and kind of fighting, and they used a very specific sample from that track in Kill la Kill. I can't stand this as it just reminds me of bad AMVs, and AMVs have a very specific point to them - the music is supposed to be focused on, and the video complimentary to it. The music was a distraction here, this is a general opinion of mine, and I don't think they did it more than once IIRC. I don't understand how you can hear this played back to you when editing and think it's good. Voice acting was acceptable, neither good nor bad. Story - meaningless, only the sniper's backstory is interesting and it gets so little attention and has so little to do with what's going on other than to annoy us. I couldn't help but feel like someone was trying to explain to me in my ear at random intervals throughout the movie and talking way too loud because they're drunk "THIS LOLI IS THE GREATEST SNIPER IN THE WORLD! HER FATHER WAS A SNIPER! HER MOTHER WAS A SNIPER! SHE'S BEEN SNIPING SINCE SHE WAS A FETUS! SHE WAS THE SPERM THAT FERTILIZED THE EGG THAT WAS PRODUCED WHEN HER MOTHER KILLED SADDAM!" holy fuck we get it guys please enough already, we're not dumb. It's really boring, I would far prefer a series of shorts focusing on each Loli or a group of them in the field carrying out operations, which thankfully does finally happen to an extent. I want to see more jungle warfare and guerilla tactics used by cute girls to kill grown men like they're possessed by Jasons Statham and Bourne at the same time. Instead we get some blockbuster style "politics" with corruption, red tape, subterfuge, but really no payoff or point to any of it, a little taste of a lesbian relationship between two people that mean nothing to anything else happening, and the feeling at the end that nothing happened, and no wrap up. Who greenlit this script, that's what I want to know - because they unfortunately shat on the parade of talent that made this movie so watchable despite it's complete irrelevance and lack of inspiration as a story. Art - this is the thing. Stuff looks good, it really does. The lighting is great. The weapons and angles and scoped scenes and backgrounds and to an extent the character models as well - there is some good work that was done here. It's actually quite nice to look at, I like the colours, the flashback sequences have a different palette and it works nicely to emphasize the "this is a piece of a dark past" point, though they prove unable to capitalize on this achievement. If someone did make an AMV out of this material, it would probably be pretty good. There's frankly stuff to study in here, if you were interested in replicating cute Anime girls doing military stuff. The standout is the art and in particular the effort to replicate the look and feel of war/spec ops movies that follow a small unit on a journey through the battlefield. Honestly what a piece of shit plot though. I can't tell you this is good, and I can't tell you why I enjoyed it. Because then they might come for me, and I don't wanna go to jail. The story is very, very meaningless. My guess would be that if you can't appreciate this for it's aesthetic you'll probably turn it off in the middle.