My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars
We never do learn where Santa Paws' partner comes from and other than maybe two scenes in the entire movie, we never see her. Santa Paws is a well known fixture both from this movie, but also the original Santa Paws and Santa Buddies, which also begs the question, where is Puppy Paws? Or is he a younger sibling to this bunch, and these original pups are the ones who are missing? Regardless, these pups have to learn some hard and fast lessons when their greed for magic causes them to erase Christmas spirit in an entire town, echoing out across the world and causing problems all the way back home in the North Pole. As usual, Eli and Eddy are deployed to track down the wayward Pole residents and fix whatever has gone very wrong.
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
The trailers for this made it look like it might be similar to other merge games already on the market, but in reality it's more of an RPG where you search for items and build things to collect your cats and progress through the story. Unsure right now how long I'll end up playing this if it'll stick more long term, but it's entertaining and the cats are adorable.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Daisuke Kanbe is rather slick in how he handles things, but he's also rather naive as he believes everything can be solved with money. When he runs into roadblocks where information or balances are denied to him, he's rather lost at what to do. Haru Katou on the other hand, is well seasoned and would be on the more elite teams except for issues with gunfire, which are a rather sore spot for him. It results in a lot of head butting on top of friction with the newest detective - who could have had any department assignment he wanted. This series is still pretty new, but it shows a lot of promise.
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars
Makoto discovers a very odd ability to literally leap through time, leading to a rather frivolous lifestyle until she realizes that maybe other people are hurting in her adventures. She then sets to trying to make things better with her newfound ability.... only every time she tried to fix something, everything becomes exponentially worse. It takes the intervention of her friend, Chiaki, who it turns out isn't from her time at all, to fix everything she's done wrong, at the cost of his own ability to return home. Finally having some understanding of how everything works, Makoto is able to use one last leap to allow Chiaki to go home, though it appears maybe she doesn't really want him to leave after all. There's not really an ending to this movie as the whole time paradox and the limited number of jumps seem to leave it hanging in the air if these two friends will be reunited in the future or not.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a cute film where two teenagers are swapping bodies in their sleep, except apparently not on a parallel timeline, leading to some confusion when they try to search for each other. It seems as if fate has other plans for them and horrors of history may have been corrected only for these two to never meet. But can you really forget someone when you've lived part of their life?
Psycho-Pass (2012)
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Some of these cases are truly horrifying, but I guess that's why the "psycho-pass" is seen as so bad in these suspects. However, is the Sibyl System really that much better? The series of checks and balances seem to work for most, but result in an unusually harsh system for any who don't conform to the standard. By some miracle or luck, it seems that any obstacle thrown at Akane so far has not "tainted" her psycho-pass, even when she does seem to start understanding the "dogs" of the Ministry that she works with as they try to solve their hardest case yet.
Psycho-Pass: The Movie (2015)
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
The movie itself is interesting, but there are obvious references that may not make the most sense if you haven't watched the first season of the anime yet. Akane Tsunemori is sent into a different country to find out what a previous co-worker and subordinate, Shinya Kogami, is doing supposedly helping a rebellion. What she finds turns out to be much bigger, and she was the lead to get the rest of her team, and country, in to take over - which doesn't sit so well with the honest-to-a-fault inspector.
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I wanted to really like this game as I like Harry Potter, but this RPG just didn't do it for me. With all the costs, wait times, and very boxed in responses, it felt more like a harsh script than game play. Perhaps if there was more flexibility in the story than a direct A to Z with no variants it might be more entertaining.