Score: 8

"I wouldn't have known it was a sequel."

submission: The Love I'm Searching 4

date: December 22, 2009

I see you took a new direction with this installment of the Don't Trip series, Skaijo. That's not a bad thing: I certainly liked Adam Phillips' "new direction" for Brackenwood. But, you know, somehow I just don't get the same "feel" from this as I did from Don't Trip or This Is UNMEI. Maybe it was that it starred characters that were previously in supporting roles, but I think it was more the lack of action.

PROS:
Is it a sequel to Don't Trip and This Is UNMEI, two of my favorite Flash animations of all time? Yes. Is it fairly good in its own right, without story implications? Yes. Can it be a good starting point for building Ilu as a character later? I hope so, because this animation made me like her for her dreams, even if she does bully the younger kids (or hang out with people who do). You say you did this to improve your background skills? I say you succeeded.

CONS:
The improved backgrounds do nothing to make the characters look better, and their natural scruffiness is made all the more apparent without action scenes. Much of the movie, even at the start of the day, they look kinda dirty, like they've already been through something that day. Then again, it's not as if I'm an artist at all. No, my main complaint is the feel of this movie. Sure, you wanted to make something for the series that wasn't over-the-top "Uli vs. Trip" stuff. Fine. But just having a mellow, slice-of-life-ish thing in what was previously an "action series"... It just doesn't feel right. Not too much of a negative, since I like this episode on its own, but I liked this series for its action.

OVERALL:
I liked the first two better, but that's not saying I didn't like this one. I hope you can work Ilu's character development into future episodes, while restoring some of the action.
4/5, 8/10.

Score: 10

"Oh, yes! Finally!"

submission: the Last of the Dashkin

date: December 15, 2009

I've been waiting for all too long a time for this. Really, over two years? And in that time, how much has changed? Features were added and tweaked and changed, users came and went, exploits were discovered and fixed. And that's just this website. All through this, I've been waiting, wondering, "When is the next Brackenwood coming out?" I should have reviewed this when it came out a week ago.

PROS:
It's a new direction for the series, giving a real introduction to Bitey's character and backstory instead of "Bitey being an asshole while outrunning Sonic the Hedgehog" (not that I didn't love those), but it's still got what I love about Brackenwood: the animation, a little bit of the fun (at least, that part where he smashes the hive over that purple Bigfoot's head), some high-speed chasing. Meanwhile, this gives some actual story and character development. You know, something for people who would like something a bit "deeper" to think about than just the random funny exploits of Bitey. Ooh, and the YuYu as the kidnappers of the rest of the Daskin, somehow I think that will give some meaning to when Bitey nearly got kidnapped after some more plot revelation, though fine if it doesn't.

CONS:
You're expecting me to find negatives in a Brackenwood movie? Call me a fanboy, but I can't find any.

OVERALL:
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, my favorite anime of all time, got more awesome after adding more and more storyline and continuity to the series and reducing (though not really eliminating) the episodic comic elements. I can clearly see Brackenwood turning out the same way, and that's saying something given how much I like the series already. You've got me waiting for the next one, Mr. Phillips.

5/5, 10/10, Favorited.

Score: 2

"And the humor is, where?"

submission: 3rd Grade Transformers

date: October 20, 2009

This movie isn't all bad, but the humor (is it or is it not supposed to be a comedy of some sort?) is either invisible to me, or just plain nonexistent. Now, I'll admit that I haven't seen Revenge of the Fallen, but it seems like the plot and action of the movie are not connected to this submission as the focus is not on the Transformers, but on the LOL WACKY MISHAPS of the school play.

PROS:
The art isn't too bad for what you're trying to get across. And as usual for an Egoraptor movie, the sound is perfect, especially the voice acting.

CONS:
Where to start... How about the fact that it's not that funny? I mean, I can recognize that these are supposed to be jokes, but other than the "girlfriend's" fake boob popping out they just don't do anything for me (and even the boob scene provided more a chuckle of embarrassment that I'm watching this in public). They just seem too random, drawn not from any inherent flaws in the storyline of the original movie nor (as you were probably going for) from the inherently non-professional nature of 3rd-graders but seemingly picked, to borrow a reference from the Family Guy-spoofing episode of South Park, by manatees in a tub of balls. Why did the ceiling fall on those four kids? I especially didn't like the puke spot at the end: was it supposed to be an anti-climactic finish? Only works in movies that looked epic before the end. Gross-out humor? Didn't work. And the one moment that could have provided real humor, where the kid was protesting that he didn't want to be in the play, was ruined by an adult pulling him offstage and apparently beating him or something. What school does that anymore? It might have been better if he broke down and cried like a little kindergarten girl.

OVERALL:
Despite supposedly being a "comedy", the jokes in this submission provide no humor content. And that's too bad, because the art and especially the voice acting could have been used for greatness.
1/5, 2/10.

Score: 7

"Not horrible, but not amazing."

submission: Super Mario bros Z ep.8

date: October 9, 2009

This is going to be my hardest review yet, specifically because I'm trying to review this movie and only this one, but it's so tempting to try to make this a review of the whole series or even of the sprite animation style. That's probably one of the pitfalls of a series being the standard-bearer for the genre or the medium: anyone who isn't a fan is going to attack the series and its creator in some symbolic assault on the whole thing. So, onto the movie, shall we?

PROS:
The fight scenes aren't bad, for sprites. They're fast-moving, and other than being made with video game characters they could conceivably do justice to the DBZ originals by which they were inspired. The few moments of actual hand-drawn work was good, and the storyline isn't that bad for a DBZ ripoff. I also liked the use of SMB3 power-ups, especially given that as a setting Bowser's gunship is reminiscent, at least in idea, of the boss levels of SMB3. Oh, and occasionally the use of Luigi as a weapon was funny.

CONS:
This series lacks originality. Sonic is already close enough to Goku, Shadow to Vegeta, and the Chaos Emeralds to the Dragon Balls, Super Sonic/Shadow is no different from Super Saiyan, so just throw it in the Mushroom Kingdom and you've got a crossover fanfiction! But what's more important for the review, this episode merely follows Episodes 6 and 7, rather than building on them. The fight scene seemed barely if at all better than those in 6, same old Internet memes that I could hear after about five minutes on the BBS, same old stuff as always! With a truly great series like Brackenwood (the exact opposite of this in every way I can think of), the author builds on his skills and his story more and more in each episode while keeping the basic premise alive. You have neglected to do that. Instead you made this just another chapter, no better than the last, except for the 3D gunship (I'd like to see a bit more of that in the next ones!) and the hand-drawn close-ups.

OVERALL:
It's not much of an innovation compared to anything else in the series, except in the two added aspects I mentioned. But it's not horrible either, being about as good as video game parodies written to Dragon Ball Z fanfiction can get. Overall, it's only a bit above average.
3/5, 7/10, and I'm wondering if I should have done this on my impersonation alt.

Score: 8

"Seeing the title in my daily e-mail..."

submission: DBZ: "Saiyan's Paradise"

date: September 21, 2009

...how did I know this was going to be a parody like this? Ah well, I've seen the videos both for the original by Coolio and for the Weird Al parody "Amish Paradise", and I gotta say, this was probably the best of the three. Then again, that's probably just because I'm more familiar with DBZ than with the ghetto or the Amish.

PROS:
Song = awesome. Since the songwriter was yourself, and it was by all appearances made specifically for this movie, I can mention that. I really liked the line about playing dead like a dog, nice and witty like rap probably should be.

CONS:
Looked a little more like a storyboard or something for a future animation than like a real animation itself. You say it's a WIP though, so I'd like to see the "finished" version if and when it comes out.

OVERALL:
Not perfect, but quite a bit better than average. 4/5, 8/10.

Score: 2

"Not very good at all."

submission: TAOSTH pt 1

date: August 13, 2009

First of all, there's probably thousands of Sonic the Hedgehog-related sprite Flash on NG (and yes, that includes ones starring Shadow or Tails or other characters as well), so if you're going to make one it has to stand out. And this one doesn't stand out at all.

PROS:
Well, it could have come out worse. I've seen Sonic tributes without sound or any sort of background, so there's two points right off the bat.

CONS:
Just one in an endless sea of similar movies, and not even a particularly good one at that. The backgrounds were dull (at least they were there, but they were dull), the storyline was bland and completely typical, the one joke (Sonic having sex with Rouge) was at once both boring and slightly off-putting, and maybe you could have given buttons to move through the text once we read it instead of just having it change at slow readers' intervals.

OVERALL:
*YAWN*, another day, another Sonic movie. Needs to separate itself more from the rest of the pack, because while there is certainly a place for Sonic tributes, there's so many of them competing in it that you have to stand out to not seem boring.
1/5, 2/10.

Score: 3

"Meh."

submission: Kangoo vs Kangoo

date: August 9, 2009

To be honest, there's nothing special about this game. It's neither much good (by current standards, the situation might have been different in 2000), nor based on a unique premise.

PROS:
The art, the animation, and the controls aren't bad... For a game made in 2000.

CONS:
Where do I start... Should I start with the fact that there's no 1-player mode, for fighting the computer or whatever? Should I mention that a single keyboard is only meant for one person, not two, making this game unnecessarily cramped? Or maybe it's that Internet use is usually a solo activity for me and most others, making it hard to even find a P2. Then there's the problem of getting across the ring to the other player: it might have been responsive enough when it was released, but the players move a bit too slow.

OVERALL:
Not too bad, but not good. Might have looked better in 2000, but this being 2009 and me having been raised on far better games than this, I'm not impressed at all.
1/5, 3/10.

Score: 9

"Yes, good."

submission: Hell Yes

date: August 9, 2009

I've known for a while that you had some level of talent, Orangebeef. I've just wondered as long as I knew you had it, "Is he ever going to use that talent as anything but a spammer?" To be honest, I also usually wondered "What's the awesome song in the intro he uses?" And this movie answered both those questions in one single two-word answer: Hell Yes.

PROS:
It was, to say the least, shocking to see that you, a known spammer, got Daily Feature when I saw the post by P-Bot. However it wasn't quite so shocking to see that you overcame the manifest prejudice of Newgrounds users after I decided to watch the movie. Extending the Orangebeef pipe intro to include a longer part of the song and new material, this is about the best Orangebeef movie I've seen yet, and it makes me look forward to more.

CONS:
While this movie is senseless, it's a Beck song so that's to be expected. The main problem here, however, is that it's too short. It's only, what, about a minute's worth of the song? And the cliffhanger ending leaves me wondering, what did the cop do? But that's another tactic leaving me wanting more Beef.

OVERALL:
Great movie, hurt only by being a bit short.
5/5, 9/10.

Score: 10

"At last, the long-awaited day has arrived!"

submission: Guess Who's back!!

date: July 25, 2009

And I've just got to say, it's as amazing as I ever thought or hoped it would be. Back in my younger days, I used to think Eminem was awesome, and you know what? When he's used correctly, he is. As for the Flash:

PROS:
A hilarious depiction in Flash of the Kitty Krew's apparent mission of spreading mayhem on Newgrounds and of Wade Fulp's reaction to mayhem and disorder of any sort. Much of this movie was done, well, just as would be expected from the KK, only minus the spam flavor. Oh, and the bit at the end with the dog humping the stuffed snake was hilarious too.

CONS:
I can't think of any, except maybe that AdairTishler's part didn't fit the tone or material of the movie at all. But it's short enough to completely ignore.

OVERALL:
Exactly what I've come to expect when the KK decides to make something good: a work of Flash comedy unrivaled by any but the best, and certainly beyond the comic capabilities of popular "artists" who make their entire Flash collections from video game parodies.

5/5, 10/10, Favorited, should probably be put in the Music Videos collection.

Score: 10

"It's been too long."

submission: [L*] Lucky Stars Return

date: July 19, 2009

I have to say, I've been thinking a lot about the Lucky Stars recently. Maybe it was seeing the KK's movies mass-flagged the way certain users (whom I will not name, but you know who they are) flagged L* movies way back when, maybe it was remembering first seeing L* in the Portal that night in December 07, but I've had my mind on these Flash movies a lot recently. And now you're back. Awesome. Now, for the Flash itself...

PROS:
Ah, how I used to love these movies... Cute, funny, managing to prove spam's legitimate status in ways unimaginable from anyone but the Lucky Stars. And this is still as beautiful as it was before, the best flavor of spam by far.

CONS:
This movie is the anti-Brackenwood. While Brackenwood is made of professional Disney skills and massive visual complexity, this is made with the down-home goodness of a crew Flash and the accompanying simplicity. of course, that's only a con if the viewer wants it to be a con, and I don't really see it as such.

OVERALL:
Awesome to see this stuff in the Portal again. Awesome to see *you* in the Portal again.
5/5, 10/10.