MonkeyforaHead's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Real Legend 4]

Oh, huh. This still exists.

You sure can draw and animate, I'll give you that. Humor's a bit hit and miss, but Ruto's appearance was probably the highlight in that regard. Also nice just to see another entry to this after so long.

[Dot Dot Dot - Animated]

Neat

The real challenge with typography animations seems to be in finding a really specific aesthetic to play towards. There are some examples on Youtube that have floored me with their execution and flow. I can't honestly say that this is on par with those -- the voice track is the real starring element here -- but the animation does complement it nicely and what's there is well done.

[Minecraft Pals]

Yep

This actually works, too.

[Pokemon: Fated Encounter]

Ehh, keep at it.

I can see real effort went into this, but there is so much wrong with it that I just do not find it enjoyable to watch.

To begin with, the music is horribly mismatched. Hell, even the music you used for the credits probably would've been a better choice for the battle. Then there's the matter of the battle itself. There's a line between "intense action" and "straight-up clusterfuck", and this has crossed that. (Yes, I'm getting some DBZ vibes, and not in a good way.) The effect is compounded by the letterboxing and how close up you're usually viewing things; it's just too hard to follow. The sound effects are pretty well chosen but WAY TOO GODDAMN LOUD. ALL of them.

The animation as a whole is good, although the drawings feel a little stilted at times, in particular the people's faces. Nothing that won't improve with further practice, though.

All in all, it's still impressive. It's generic RAAAGH ENERGY BEAMS PEW PEW SHIT'S GOING DOWN stuff that I am utterly unable to find enjoyable in this particular fashion, but impressive nonetheless. I guess what I'm saying is... try to tone things down just a bit and work on your fight choreography more?

[Girlchan in Paradise Ep2]

Egoraptor, what happened to your funny?

I know what I'm letting myself in for by writing this. I'm going to get downvoted to hell because anyone who speaks ill of such a runaway hit is obviously trolling and deserves to be downvoted, etc. But I have to say this because I feel it is my duty to be the critic few others will be.

You have fallen into a rut. Your works in general are struggling to come up with original humor lately, and Girlchan is the absolute largest black hole of anti-funny I have yet seen you produce. I could feel my higher brain functions shutting down while watching this.

I loved your earlier stuff. I still do. It was cruder, but it worked. Metal Gear Awesome did a good job of speaking to everyone who had played the game by parodying its various aspects, all the while just being kind of batshit insane. I liked that. And while I realize you obviously didn't put your full effort into animating MGA1, it's clear that your genuine animation efforts have improved. You're improving as an artist/animator, and that's cool.

But really, what were you thinking when you made this? Parodies of bad anime are not something new or original. They are exceptionally hard to do in an original fashion because WE'VE ALREADY SEEN IT ALL. Laughably bad voice localization. Continuity errors. Complete lack of lip-synching. Excessive character stereotyping. These have all been done, and continue to be done, both in poor or poorly localized anime, and the parodies thereof.

Girlchan not only fails to bring anything new to the table (besides the consistently impressive range of your vocal chords), but it drags on. And on. And on.

And then you made a second episode.

I really shouldn't have to point out what I find wrong with that by this point, should I? I mean, the whole joke is that there's no consistency in the plot whatsoever. You could drag this out another 50 episodes and it'd still be exactly the same as the first two.

I offer the following suggestion: try parodying a REAL anime. Besides, you know, DBZ. Because again, the issue there is there's not really much that can be said about that that hasn't been already. Chobits? One Piece? Death Note? To Aru Majutsu no Index? I dunno. Just something that might actually give you a ground level for some humor that potentially hasn't already been wrung completely dry.

And please, for the love of God. If you're going to do another episode of Girlchan? Keep it short and punchy. Don't drag it out for what feels like 10 minutes again. I know you're still capable of some good funny, I'm just not feeling it at all with this series.

[Mad Mad Mario]

The yelling is what makes it.

Mario's sick of saving the princess, yammer yammer it's been done. However this is how it SHOULD be done. Animation's passable, lighting effects from the lava are neat, it's pretty short overall and would otherwise be unremarkable -- but the dialogue is just delivered so perfectly I couldn't help but laugh. You may have nearly wrecked your voice but you did good.

[Sprite TV 3!]

It must take serious effort to be this unfunny.

I've seen a lot of sprite shorts, and as far as the high-profile, frontpaged ones go, I honestly have to say this is the dullest by far. It's impossible to even tell what's going on in a few of them. I think I cracked a smirk once. (This is coming from someone who's way too damn lenient with criticisms on sprite stuff as a whole.)

Technically speaking, very well executed for the most part. But for the love of Jiminy Cricket, come up with some actual punchlines if you ever do this again. This was like watching someone talk about their day in a really droning fashion. Except with sprites.

[Awesome Center Redux]

A great effort, but something amiss.

I noticed the same problem with Awesome Crossing Redux, and it's even more noticable here. In fact it's the exact same kind of thing I noticed in moving between Metal Gear Awesome 1 and 2 -- pacing. I know these shorts were originally crafted to fit into a ridiculously brief timeslot and so the dialogue in the originals naturally has to run pretty quickly for it to work. Perhaps adding all the extra pauses makes the dialogue more natural, but the problem is, having seen the originals, it feels incredibly UNnatural for the style of short you're doing and the feeling you're trying to capture. What was originally fast, simplistic, and furious, now feels bogged down by comparison.

The other thing is the rerecorded lines. They were PERFECT in the original Awesome Center, and notably better in the original Awesome Crossing. Again, short, furious, and very well executed. Even ignoring the pauses for pacing, your re-performance just doesn't have the same oomph and tone of mania as the originals. I can't claim to have any experience in voice acting or have any clue how many times you probably rerecord these before they're finalized as it is, but I'm just saying I would've preferred to just have the old dialogue copy-pasted.

Lastly, though perhaps not quite as obvious, is that when you take the time to draw and animate these things properly, there's a similar feeling of loss of flow compared to the originals. When you banged those out, they were incredibly concise, even the intentionally scribbled-in-five-seconds parts. Then you go and actually draw it well and... it just feels different.

As for the completely new scenes, loved them. Since I don't have anything to compare them to, I can't exactly say they were worse for any reason.

I'm probably in the minority anyway, I'm just saying that there's a certain quality to your less intricate works that stands out above the ones you've spent far more time on. In the off chance that you happen to read this out of the thousands more reviews there'll no doubt be within a week, I hope you can take the above sentiments to heart. I still love your work and always hope to see more, but if nobody criticizes you'll never know what could be improved. That's what I'm here for.

[Badly Drawn Dawg Series 3]

There always was something wrong with you.

Just wrong enough to get onto the frontpage and have a T-shirt and the works. You sick, sick man. Congrats on that.

[Metal Gear Awesome 2]

Too awesome for its own good

I loved it, but the one thing it was missing was the simplistic, ultra-fast-paced charm of the original. It's great to see that so much more effort went into this one, but it works against itself somewhat in places -- Raven's muscles are mildly entertaining to look at during his speech, but his speech itself just draws out far too long without any real laughs. Yet simply from the cut to Ocelot with his arm still gushing blood, I laughed.

I thought the best bits were the lasers, cigarettes and landmines, and then Snake, Jesus, and God all running off at the mouth without so much as a gap between them. They're all perfectly fast-paced, and in the case of the first part, very true (I'd never heard anybody else complain about that bit and thought I was alone).

It also seems maybe a bit too grounded in reality overall compared to the first. I mean, within about the first 40 seconds of MGA1 there's been a break in the fourth wall, a Dig Dug joke that goes by so fast it's barely visible, and several out-of-fucking-nowhere bits (I KILLED A DOG).

Also I thought that Snake swore just a liiiittle bit much beyond being funny this time.

I still loved it, glad you made it, hope you're still getting some enjoyment out of making these, and here's to a MGA3 somewhere down the line.

By the way, whatever happened to An Awesomer Halloween?