Movies: Attack on Titan

Movies: Attack on Titan

Introduction

Attack on titan. A title that does not make any sense to anyone at all... is there only one Titan? is Titan a place? Maybe a moon? if you are confused by the name... THEN THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY YOU MAY LIKE THE MOVIE!!! This movie is actually a Japanese Anime that has finished its season one quite a while ago. In fact I believe it is a 2013 anime that ended at 23 episodes in Sep 2013. The anime itself has obviously a more well developed storyline as it is more then 10 hours long as compared to this short short 1 and a half hour movie.

The problem with this movie is that the director of the movie took his own artistic direction to the movie. It will not be like the anime, but whether this is a good or bad thing, it will depend on the audience. Ok so what is a Titan in this movie? Sorry its not the roman Titan that fights with Zeus and Poseiden all that. It is merely this ugly fella

Yum yum little humans!

And what more! Like humans, they come in different shape, sizes, pose, gender, and even ugliness. Only that all those aspects, they have a much bigger range. Except gender.. They are genderless and merely look female or male or a genderless thingy. Of course this is the anime version. To whet your taste bud.. here's the movie one!

Roar! I'm so HOT! Global warming has taken a toll!

Woops! Sorry if you puked or anything... Here's some pictures of the staff to get you back on your feet

Posing! Looking good.... or relatively similar actually...

Ok! Enough of small talk. So is this movie worth seeing? Lets break it down

Storyline 2 (If you really hate people not following the canon) 3 (if you try stay neutral) /5

Lets get it out there at this point of the review. This movie is not going to follow the anime. I would say that besides the presence of the same Titans, use of same equipment, use of same names, it is a pretty different show. In fact, try to look at this movie as an ALTERNATE dimension of their world and maybe it would just be more palatable to you.

That being said, the speed of this movie is slightly too slow. It unfortunately cannot start off running like the usual action movies where at the very beginning there are already action scenes. As a result its a slow start that introduces the background and everything else but in general, it was still too slow for me. Once the action picks up however, it gets a bit more exciting and flowing but there was also quite a slow segment towards the middle of the movie and after that it is mostly action all the way.

However, the storyline as it has to be fitted into 1 hour and 30 mins, suffers from too many jumps and everything finishes a bit too quickly (if you can really consider that the movie finishes).

Character 3/5

There is some attempts at character development and there is effort put in to create a distinction between all the characters in this movie. But its short play time is back to haunt this movie as at the end of the movie, you would probably not feel too much for most of the supporting characters of the movie.

People who follow the anime will at least be able to know more clearly what the significant difference in the characters are but then again, it is still quite different from the movie itself.

Cinematography 3/5

For an action flick, this movie is just missing a bit of the more traditional shots. Sure there is some high speed shots where you can see how fast the characters are flying here and there but there are some parts of the movie that is pretty dark and it is just missing out on extra effort such as epic top down shots and more. 

There is a good feeling of speed and excitement but there is really much more this movie could have done to make every battle that bit more exciting.

Music 4/5

Actually, the movie and sound effects in this movie did do pretty well to add some elements of disgust and fear and excitement throughout the movie. It really did bring out the hopelessness of the world that they live in.

Spectacle 3.5/5

Again from a neutral stand point, this movie does introduce a pretty interesting new world that we live in where nothing is in favor of man kind. So the storyline would be fun for the newcomer. Sadly, the short movie length means everything ends just a tad bit too soon and all the action scenes are relatively short and ordinary. The whole movie could be made to have a lot more exciting action on a more large scale basis but guess that was not the direction they wanted to take overall.

Overall

Storyline: 3 (Too short, not able to tell enough without making sacrifices to depth of story)

Character: 3 (Too short, not able to have the opportunity to build up audience empathy to characters)

Cinematography: 3 (Has some good action shots, but that's about all the shots they have and they are generally a bit short lived and quick to end)

Music: 4 (Good use of sounds and music to bring up evoke audience feelings of disgust and more)

Spectacle: 3.5 (Average on the storyline side, also average on the action side. It gets a .5 as it is a new alternate world which still helps to keep the movie new and engaging)

Overall: 3.3 (Overall, I would say that this is a fair enough action flick, for the short 1.30 hrs movie in the midst of 2 hours action flick, this movie may not be exciting enough to be a must see yet. It's a good way to spend the time if you were looking for something to do and like to see an action movie in a alternate world with some gore and quite a lot of dying. For fans of the anime, you can enjoy this movie, but you must first set aside all expectation that this is the same as the anime. It is probably not a movie that you MUST see at this juncture and you will not really be missing too much by not seeing this movie.)

Food: Menya Musashi Kodou

Food:

Had quite a few pretty good eating outings recently and decided that I should be a bit more regular in my reviews and share with people about interesting places to eat at.... or not! Since I have the opportunity to eat out while some people might want to make a more informed choice, I feel that its good to make full use of the information I have garnered and perhaps help you manage expectation or even save your trip and time. So here is another pretty unique place that I have eaten recently.

This shop is recognizable by their samurai drawings on the outside as well as inside of the store. I believe he is supposed to be Musashi who is famous for using two swords at the same time?

So lets get down into the review.

Food

We ordered a single side dish to share and a main dish for each of us and you can see the pictures below

Tempura mushroom! 

Besides this side dish, there were other sides like steamed or fried gyoza and tofu amongst other choices. It was pretty nicely fried and very crispy!

The standard Ramen with your choice of meat

Same Ramen, different choice of meat!

The unique point of this place is that they have 3 different type of soup bases namely the white, black and red soup base. The white is the usual Tonkatsu type which is pictured above. The black is apparently more garlic based but none of us purchased that choice. Mine was the red base that you shall see below which is supposed to be spicy and if you order it in this separate form it is apparently thicker then the normal soup.

This was my order, char siew separate from the soup base cause I am brave!

 The next interesting draw of this place is that the choice of noodle that I ordered whereby the ramen is separate from the soup/gravy, you can actually upside the noodles up to 5X the original. The original is about 120g which should be the usual for the soup ramen. Then you can get up to 600g of ramen. However, they do not add extra soup or gravy for free though which is probably the issue we have over here that i will discuss further. Make a guess of how much I ordered since it was free :)

Side view of my ramen

Top view so you can make a better guess

As you continue to guess here is what other issues we have. As you can see, basically all the meals are just about 2 or 3 slices of meat with bamboo and also half an egg. You basically can only choose between the soup version or this version where you can add more noodles. There are some other dishes they serve but i suppose this is what they are suppose to be special in.

So as you can see, it was pretty difficult to finish eating up everything and it was pretty clear i over estimated my abilities. Note that the amount of noodles can increase but there is additional charges if you wanted more sauce/gravy. The biggest problem is that the noodles are served slightly cold or at least towards room temperature. After dipping it into the sauce many many times, you will have a situation whereby the sauce is just cold.. This made the dish a bit harder to finish and I think it is safe to say that if you choose more then 2X the normal noodle amount you will experience this. They should really just consider putting the gravy on sort of a heater or like a steamboat style so that the gravy and hence the noodles will be eaten piping hot.

I personally love to eat my noodles hot.. So this made the experience and taste of the food a bit less tasty then I would have liked. That being said, the normal soupy ramen choices are all fine but they do not have the additional noodle options. The noodles are slightly more unique then what i have tasted before and they are quite QQ or chewy in a good sense.

All in all, the food  is different from your usual ramen shops, has a bit more expensive feel, but if you going for the soup separate from the noodle option, it will not be nice for anything more then 2X of noodles.

Food 3/5

Atmosphere 3.5/5

The staff is pretty attentive and the ordering is done via a tablet which gives you pictures and the like. However the traditional menu is still given to you. The little probably that i have is that all the dishes such as the meats are given in their traditional japanese styled english spelt names so you will see stuff like Tontoro and have no clue what meat it is.

Adds some authenticity to the food but not non-japanese friendly. The seats are big and they serve water freely so that is some plus points to the place. Overall, the atmosphere is pretty ok, slightly noisier as the place is slightly squeezy but thanks to the location of the seats, the waiters and staff will not be getting into your way very often.

Price 3/5

Its not expensive, but i would say it is neither cheap too. For someone like me who cannot really tell the difference between quality meat, I can't really tell why the usual choices are more expensive when the portion of meat is lower. You actually have one two ramen dishes with the same type of meat but you need to add extra 2 or 3 dollars for a additional slice of the meat and everything is the same.

Its good they dont really charge extra for the separate noodle and gravy choice if you want to add extra noodles. But note that it already costs 14.90 - 18.90 for that choice as opposed to 12 - 15 for the normal Ramen when in essence it is somewhat identical.in content to the normal Ramen.

Side dishes are also averagely priced from 4.90 to about 10.90 depending on what you get.

Our total for 3 persons for 3 mains and 1 side was about 60+ dollars just for your information

Accessibility 3/5

This place is located in Jurong and as far as it seems I think it is currently the only one of its kind. But its location near to the MRT is pretty good although all staying at the north and east would probably find it a chore to get there. There was actually a queue at about 7 plus so I suggest that you queue earlier to avoid. Its more due to the small size of the outlet and possibly cause it might be slightly novel.


Overall 

Food: 3 (It tries to be premium and feels premium in some sense, but taste wise it is just slightly lacking especially for my choice)
Atmosphere: 3.5 (Its a nice place to sit and chat, not too messy)
Price: 3 (Not entirely worth the price but if they do some improvements it might be more worth)
Accessibility: 3 (Has queues and is all the way on the west side, but least its near the mrt)

Overall:  3.125 (Overall, I would say this score is a good reflection of my feelings which is a place you can eat once, you wont regret it at least for the experience sake, you may come back but most likely wont feel any particular strong feeling to return. There is too little pulling factor to eat here more then once, but on your meal here, you won't feel cheated or anything either.)

I took slightly longer to post this up because its name was not in the westgate directory cause it was probably too new. Nonetheless, I should have some reviews coming out soon... in actual fact I actually currently have an excess of things to review so hope I can get it done soon :)

BTW for those who were wondering, I ordered the noodles X3 and I am proud to say, I should have managed to finish about 2.5X of the noodles before i gave up... of course one reason was due to the lack of hot gravy.. Hopefully they will take this into consideration and do something about it!

Its website is over here http://www.menyamusashi.com.sg/ for more details and stores