6th-sage's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Gone Too Far Too]

WOW (And it does NOT stand for world of warcraft)

When I first watched this animation, needless to say I was completely blown away. Much as I mildly enjoyed the previous Gone Too Far episode, the impact from the 2nd one compared to the first is like a nuclear explosion to a chemistry experiment gone wrong. Thus, I feel like I'd be doing this injustice if I didn't vote 5 on it every day until I'm dead and leave a review with a perfect 10. That being said, I can't vote a 10 on it just yet. Let me explain.

I always try to max out on words in a review when I absolutely love a flash animation and must rate it. But I feel extremely speechless, because usually I rewatch the animation again and again to try to nitpick any small flaws and couldn't find any. It took me nearly a week of rewatching and pausing to finally find some extremely small flaws that I'd like to point out.

1. Inconsistency: There's a small bit of inconsistency with the two episodes: for example, the first one was a bit bloody and violent. The 2nd one did not involve any gore and not even a drop of blood. I feel like I was watching a cartoon network special. There was also some inconsistency with the character. The first episode showed him as a kid who's gone trick or treating and could barely muster the courage to handle an axe to avenge his friend (or to simply kill the maniac before kills him). I now find the kid not only adept with a firearm, but also explosives. What's up with that? Yes it's a cartoon, but it contains the same protagonist, doesn't it?

2. Unoriginal: I was so blown away at the sheer detail and effort into the artwork, physics, and movement that I was almost afraid to point out that these types of music videos have been done thousands if not tens of or hundreds of thousands of times not just on newgrounds but on cartoon network or Nickelodeon. I have to give you some credit though, being that you are a single artist who just saw what he wanted to see in a song, so I'll cut you some slack. But I better see something of your own that YOU created that did not come out of the daily cartoon we see on TV.

3. Skin-deep animation and protagonist creation: I see a music video. I see a wonderful animation. I see a lot of blood and sweat from the effort you put into this, yet why do I not see a story with a meaningful background and character development? Yes it's a flash animation and the story is simple: the adventures of a kid in a werewolf costume with a trick-or-treating gone horribly wrong. Yet, as much as I want to do so, I do not see so much of a personality on the kid. Rather, from the artwork I can see the personality of the zombies (especially the lead singer zombie) far more clearly than the kid. The leader is quick-witted, commands a vast army of the dead, and sings extremely well. The kid is... well... a normal kid as far as I can see. There's virtually no personality to the kid, aside from being slightly clever and fast reflexes. I mean, we can replace him with almost any character from cartoon network of his height and stature and he'll do almost the same thing. I recommend some background on the kid - like where he came from or where he grew up and what kind of person he is. Because I'm sure most kids can't learn to handle a shotgun or set up and operate explosives. For character development, you may want to look at hotdiggedydemon's flashes like Jerry or Mickey the Dick.

4. Cliffhanger ending again... feels a bit incomplete and the ending was a tad bit rushed. I mean, as much as I enjoyed the protagonist winning, I'm sure you could have pulled off a better ending than just blowing them up at once.

You may see what you will from the insanely small flaws that I picked out. I may be overly picky on what is already in my opinion a very perfect animation. It's newgrounds after all and this is already beyond what even a brilliant non-professional flash animation artist could achieve.

And it's a simple flash animation after all. You can't be bothered to stuff a deep and complete plot into a few minutes of animations.

I wasn't going to vote a 10, but, what the hell... 10/10

[LARRY episode 2]

GEEZ FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, FINALLY

Wait, does that that mean I'm going to have to wait for another year and a half for Larry 3. Well, I'm staying in Australia for 4 years so I can hunt you down if you take that long. XD

Anyway, now onto the main points. (My reviews are long, so to make it not so hard to read, I'll keep what I have to say concise and straight to the point). The person below me focused more on the artwork, so I'll focus more on plot and character development.

1. What I want to praise:
-Improved physics of the human body.: In your previous flashes (And I'm talking
Larry 1.5 and prior all the back way to Paladin) your portrayed movements such as walking, striking, and running are flawed and awkward. It's hard for the animator to get the physics right, because they have to study a lot, but it's always nice to see we obey the law of nature and physics. (Of course, this takes place in Karryon rather than Earth, but they're still humans, right?) I appreciate how you took your time to make more of the flash follow the law of physics. And I would definitely appreciate it if you would fine-tune it to perfection.
-Excellent use and portrayal of characters: Almost all characters portrayed come back and you give them a meaning (except the cameos). I like how you give each a unique gag kind of thing, like Larry being a midget, the priest a pedophile, malicious (or however you spell him) running into walls, etc. And yes, we see how Larry got stronger.
-Excellent introduction - It had an effect on us viewers because it intrigued us. It made us wonder what we were doing. And it showed us how much you improved on your animation skills.
-A lot of comedic effect: Very little of them are cheesy (except all of the cameos, for some reason I don't find them funny). Like how you chopped off Pup's legs and how the assassin only knew how to say yes, etc. They were pretty original.
-Epic Music: I LOVE the music
2. What I want to criticize:
-Comedy>Drama: You seem to have your episodes focused more on comedy than drama. Now, I know you mean to make this parody the "traditional" hero, you overdo it at times. Which is why I have to say that this was not as epic as episode 1. Because you focused more on comedy than drama, there was very little plot development. Which is my next point...
-Very little plot development: Larry got a steed (a dog). That's it. There was no furious battle with the antagonist, not even against the assassin and there was the two sides didn't even make contact. I feel like this is a .5 episode only with Larry in it. I'm sorry, but as much as I liked Larry episode 2 I'm really disappointed that there wasn't more development in this episode.
-Use of violence on animals: need I say more?
3. What I want to suggest
-More character development: Essential to the story. We need to see the characters change and develop. Aside from Larry getting stronger and the overlord getting an evil underling... nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Not with Kikket, not with the side characters, not with anyone. I understand that this is focused on Larry, but we should probably see Kikket training himself to keep himself in shape, etc. Improvement of the side characters would be nice (getting smarter, stronger, funnier, stupider, etc).
-Some minor stuff regarding art that the person below me already mentioned.
4. What I want to ask:
- With Larry having been trained by Kikket to have stronger and faster reflexes, why didn't Larry notice the Assassin at all? Why didn't you let them fight? Was it the "pulling on cliche" thing again? An epic battle with the Assassin would have been awesome regardless. I really wished you would have done that.
- Will Larry get shield and armor? Or is he the offensive type and all that will just in the way?
- Will you please stop coming up with disgusting things such as making out with his dead father's head and chopping off a dog's leg?
5. What I look forward to:
-Larry 3
-Other traditional fairy tale cliches you want to pull on

And for the last time, I loved this episode. There was just a few things I wanted to point out.

Jazza responds:

Thanks for the very detailed review! Now I will share my side of things, it is simple, I don't think it through very much. Now Larry and his series have been worked on and planned more then other episodes but the way I work is very improvisational. Sometimes I don't know where the joke is going until I voice or animate it.

I know it's not conventional but it's worked for me so far and people have responded well so far, but I'm not saying I don't need improvement, I have so much to learn and your points are a few of many things I need to improve on.

Thanks so much for your review and kind words, i really appreciate knowing where people can see me working on, and I'll definitely try!!

[Madness Confliction]

Oh hey! It's you from last year!

Definitely was blown away by this. Last year it was Hank versus the Savior (Jesus), and now it's Hank versus the Clown. In all of honesty, I was expecting the clown to lose, because from last year's madness day, Hank seems to always die from the clown's hand (because he kept getting his ass kicked in the original madness series).

Definitely took it up a notch. The shading is still a bit below par, though the camera angles and correct timing made it look 3d from some points of view. Other times the animation looked paper flat.

The action and pacing was definitely what made the film attractive. It's always awesome to see where you could take this to. The clown was supposed to have kicked Hank's ass again and again (as indicated in Krinkels' plot). But I suppose you've already explained that this has not relation with Krinkels' plot.

I really hope this animation wins. And keep polishing your flash skills. If you do this right, you will be one of the great flash artists on newgrounds. Heck, you're pretty close already.

~6th-sage

Hulalaoo responds:

:D !! hell yes

[WGJ4K: Mickey's Rebuttal]

Great! This is definitely one of your better ones

Though at times I feel like this is a ripoff of the original Foamy Fan mail series, there were some things at times that made it unique. But you left out my question... >.<" Oh well...

I do have one letter that may make it worthwhile:

Dear Mickey:

Give me the address of VGV. I'm going to bust you out.

Nick

Wonder how Mickey will respond to it.

[Neenja 4]

There are some issues with this I need to mention

Let me first begin by congratulating you on improving and taking the series to another level. I cannot begin to tell you how much I appreciate your effort and dedication even after you left us hanging for YEARS. (DAMN IT, where's NEENJA 5???).

You've definitely upgraded the artwork, animation and sound/musical effects. And from what I've seen, they added a lot of intensity and suspense. I love how you mix in some drama with comedy. The animation was straightforward and the plot was understandable, and the characters were extremely enjoyable.

Now, what I have issues with is how many newgrounds artists tend to make their protagonist overly dominant (way too powerful). The main character with only several days of training, managed to take out an ogre without getting hurt, not even a scratch in fact. No blood, no injury, nothing. And you added insult to injury by adding the fact that he hasn't mastered his ultimate powers just yet. Overly dominant heroes tend to make stories go awry because they're boring. And it's annoying to see a hero too strong that the bad guys can't do anything, because then... well, there's no point to the story, because we know that the heroes will always win and it gets annoying and repetitive. There's just no room left for character development when the hero is so strong and the bad guys can never keep up with them. Why not just kick every bad guy's ass at the same time and be done with? You should've at least let the ogre smack him into the wall at least once to show that the bad guys have SOME abilities.

Stories are supposed to be where the heroes are underdogs. They're beaten down, chewed up, and defeated time again and again before finally defeating the overly arrogant bad guy. I think you tried to portray that the hero is an underdog through the training by making the hero look bad and inexperienced, but that's a double edged sword, because seeing such an inexperienced, clumsy hero defeating a monstrous ogre.

I suppose during the next series, you're going to let the hero finally suffer defeat by being overpowered by sheer number. And then he's going to go emo for a while, get a new inspiration, master his ultimate powers and finally defeat the main antagonist.

That's the next problem with the series: It's a bit predictable. Predictability = boring because we know what's going to come next. It makes us not want to watch the series (the only thing that's keeping me going is the humor, but even that's going a bit dry now because I haven't seen a neenja 5 update for a long time). Add some twists, some turns, something we can't predict and something unique and original that no other series has. If you can pull that off, this series will be more spectacular than it already is.

I don't mean to be picky and I hope I don't sound too harsh. I give honest opinions to good flash artists that I see have potential (I don't do reviews for everyone) and I want to see them polish their work from raw gems into diamonds. And I know you have the potential to do that, so I'm just reminding you of some flaws that may make a good series go bad.

Remember, I love this series and all your works. Keep up the good work and I would love to see more. Looking forward to neenja 5 (hurry up with it already T__T).

6th-sage

Sykohyko responds:

thank you :)

[WGJ4K: Tough Guy FronT]

I actually enjoyed this more than the other ones

Call me crazy, but I really just didn't enjoy the previous ones as much. As much as I appreciate the effort you use to implement satire and anger from a character to humiliate for the sake of making us laugh, a lot of the jokes weren't as funny as they were with Jerry for some reason.

I think it's because the previous few episodes were more focused on parody that has been overdone than focusing on the characters themselves. For example, in Jerry, you focused more on Jerry's life, development, and actual person and had us more entwined with the character himself. We laughed because we laughed at Jerry.

In the previous WGJ4K episodes, you're portraying what Mickey is like. We get it; he's a dick. And if that's supposed to make us laugh, then might as well go back to the original Jerry episodes because they were funnier. But in this episode, you actually allowed us to get a view of Mickey the character and it gets a lot more personal. We understand Mickey from his thoughts and not just actions. That may be actually what saved it in my opinion, because not to hurt your feelings, but your previous episodes were stuff that has been done and are not original. I laughed at none of the jokes because I felt that I've seen them all somewhere.

I didn't laugh in this episode, but I admit I feel that I have been intrigued and I have felt a lot more curious. The previous episodes I forced myself to watch just because you're hotdiggedydemon. I kept expecting something more along the lines of character development and understanding the characters rather than just some lame attempts to make audiences laugh.

The show centralizes around Mickey, but I would also recommend a further insight into June and Eric, simple as they are. I would also appreciate a further elaboration into the relationship between June, Eric and the Boss. For example, were June and Eric forced to work for them or were they voluntary? Even though I may already know the answer before you answer, I would love it if you explained a small flashback of how they were hired and how they get along. The Boss and Mickey scenes are always classic, but how about shifting the viewpoints to some of the supporting characters. That would make it more complete.

Because to tell you the truth, I like Mickey and the characters. He's one of the most original characters created on newgrounds and also more complex than he seems. The way you portray him is nice, as a character who is a street banger, but for some reason he is incredibly knowledgeable and artistic. That separates him from the simple bangers who aren't educated and don't know shit and can't climb up, thus hating the world.

This is what makes all of your flashes the best. You don't make the best stories. Your attempt at parodies (aside from Awesome Racer) are lame. But character development makes up for all of that and I wish to see more. And supporting characters, if played right, can help bring out more of Mickey that makes him original and unique. Sometimes comedy may stem out from Drama. You may want to dwell into that. We don't get enough of drama in newgrounds and I think you can pull it off.

I know that you will disagree with some of my viewpoints. Heck, probably some of your fans or other people who disagree with my reviews will probably hate me (I will delete those PMs). But we all have freedom to think what we want (at least in most countries).

So respond, or don't respond, but at least take the time to read this review and think it through. Feel free to argue or feel free to ignore it completely. This review will be forgotten in days, I guarantee it, but I'm okay with that because I've said what I want to say.

I hope to see more from you and I hope to see this develop into an incredible series.

[Pico's Brother]

Top 10 material, definitely

But with the direction it was heading, I thought Pico's brother would go turn towards darkness and go evil instead of being a hero when he was revitalized. Instead of P-bot, I imagined he could become Piconjo.

Definitely quite dramatic, and voice-acting; that's actually a surprise. Although it wasn't what I had in mind, it definitely was pretty epic, with the introduction of P-bot's past and where he came from.

And by the way, you didn't include Nene... ==" But with so many submissions focusing on her, I guess it doesn't matter anyway.

Keep up the good work guys.

[Spider Powers 3]

Wow, I didn't know you were making a series!

When you first made spider powers, it gave me a pretty nice laugh. And when you made a sequel, I laughed even harder, but I thought it was over. And now this: I can't believe you made a 3rd. Where there's a 3rd, there should be a 4th.

This one was actually... only a little funny. I admit that it did make me chuckle, especially when the chair started walking off and the one-armed guy was just sitting there, the part of the bleeding sandwich still in his mouth. I think I finally know why X's could talk.

But dude, what happened to the first character from Spider Powers? The 6-armed guy, I'll call him. He just... disappeared, are you going to make him show up again? Because he's actually sort of fun, kind of like the one-armed guy.

You a fan or friend of explosm by any chance? Your artstyle's similar, but heck, there's a lot of styles similar to that one - the BadGuys for instance (that fucker stopped making that series ==").

Any chance of a clue of where the series will go next? How about a guy who needs anger management?

[Waiting for the Bus 2]

This should be submitted for an April's Fool joke

This took a little longer to submit, and the punchlines are in the credits. They made me smile a little, but not laugh. I guess the real message you were trying to send was to play a joke on us - make us expect something epic and then let us down. I even bet dragging it out to submit it was part of the joke to make us expect something amazing.

And yes, your expectations of disappointing us were successful. We were disappointed.

I hope you're happy.