Movie 6 early impressions are online, and… (spoiler free)
I was going back and forth on whether to address this at all but it’s sticking in my mind too much to ignore, so let’s address the elephant in the room: some members of the general public have now seen the new movie for the first time as part of an early preview screening event, meaning the very earliest reviews are available. I’m not going to do a formal report on the event like I have done for previous movie PR events because most of the news reports are about ano/Jesse/Shinobu Hasegawa messing around at the stage greeting and while they’re swell talents and all, I assume the celebrity guest stars aren’t why my audience of mostly non-Japanese Keroro Gunso fans are interested so it’s not relevant enough to go over. I just want to talk about viewers’ impressions from social media because they were…kind of all over the place. “Divisive” is probably gonna be the number one word people use to describe this movie. I’m sure you guys have time to read this, it’s not like there’s any other heavily polarizing finales to popular franchises that too many strongly opinionated fans saw early that came out today, right?
If you want to go into the movie with zero expectations whatsoever you should probably skip this post, but I won’t spoil anything specific, so don’t worry about that, though I have seen a few spoilers—frankly I’ve just given up in advance on avoiding them, I do too much coverage to spend however many months trying to maneuver around them until we have access to the movie outside Japan. If you like to browse twitter for fanart and such and are still trying to avoid movie spoilers for potentially half a year or more, good luck lol.
Good news first, a few shared points were pretty universally positive even among those who didn’t like the movie as a whole:
The animation is high quality, much better than the older movies (makes sense, it’s been 16 years). Many people praised the fight scenes.
The character designs and art direction are very cute.
The returning characters sound just like they used to with the only exception I’ve heard so far being Jouji Nakata sounds a little aged (not surprised about this either). Every classic character gets a moment to shine and is largely in-character compared to previous installments.
Aruru and Deruru are seemingly the highlights when it comes to the actual story; even some who didn’t like the rest of the script say they’re pretty good characters. Jesse’s performance in both roles is impressive.
And now for the negatives—or, well, it’s really just one big negative that looms over the whole film. Although whether or not it’s even a negative is very subjective. But I will say the people who took the most issue with it were the diehard Keroro fans in the audience, which is why I think it’s worth discussing because…the audience of this blog is presumably diehard Keroro fans. So here’s the big catch:
Supposedly all the big jokes and setpieces involve very ham-fisted parodies. No shit Sherlock, it’s a movie from the series that brought you Trying to Sell Gundam To Children for 350+ Episodes: The Show. Okay but when you think about the parodies in Keroro, outside of the anime’s Gundam advertisements, they tend to be more subtle/not spell the reference out to you. If you get it you get it, if you don’t it’s still funny because the characters are inherently entertaining enough that they can do just about anything and be endearing. And to an extent that last part is still true about this movie based on impressions from both those who enjoyed it and the naysayers, the problem is that the parodies themselves allegedly drive the progression rather than the other way around. And while some of the works parodied are popular enough that much of the general audience with even minimal experience with anime will recognize them, several parodies are there presumably just because Fukuda worked on the source material or personally knows/likes specific actors. And because the scenes are themed around the parodies, some of them might distract from the existing characters/story and arguably overstay their welcome. So if you’re out of the loop, it might be a bit difficult to follow big chunks of the film.
In other words, the main complaint from some (keyword: SOME, but they were very vocal) Keroro fans was that it felt like a Yuichi Fukuda movie first and a Keroro movie second. Not that it didn’t have elements of the other Keroro movies—the ensemble cast still gets to save the world, there’s still power of love and friendship scenes, etc.—and even a few people who were disappointed in the over-reliance on parody felt those elements were present enough. But the ratio of heartfelt to gag seems to be quite a bit more on the gag side compared to movies 1–5. Allegedly there’s some continuity mismatches as well but it’s literally been 16 years it’s reasonable to not expect it to be perfect in that regard especially since the anime contradicted itself and the manga several times over.
You might be saying to yourself “people are just whining because it’s different and they think different = bad” and uh. Well you’re not wrong really that actually is pretty much the entire complaint. Because the people who were new to KG and/or are only casual fans—or came more for the celebrity guests than the series itself—largely had a great time, especially if they got the jokes, and the movie was apparently very newcomer- friendly wrt introducing the Keroro elements. Many in attendance have said that the theater was filled with laughter almost the entire time. But I also sympathize with the “it’s too different” perspective because people who feel strongly about maintaining the spirit of the older material aren’t really getting that here. If this was an annual movie franchise still like Doraemon I don’t think one movie that didn’t meet longtime fans’ expectations would be that big of a deal, but not only is it the first Keroro movie in over a decade, it’s also the last adaptation period featuring the beloved original voice cast, so some feel insulted that a movie by a sorta self-aggrandizing screenwriter is their swan song.
I will say I saw this coming to an extent because ever since Fukuda was announced as the director people were discussing this outcome being a possibility. I think Bandai Namco’s rationale in choosing him is that the series is too old/has been dormant too long for it to do well if it were to only appeal to existing fans, and Fukuda’s live-action adaptations do well financially even when the reception is mixed, especially the Gintama films and the recent Sakamoto Days film. Based on the fact that the non-hardcore fan audience at the preview screening did like the movie, that might not have been a bad call. Of course, the movie isn’t out officially yet, and it’s still slightly too early to start tracking presales (a box office nerd friend told me two weeks before release is when it starts being indicative of anything). But I figure that regardless of how it performs the reactions are going to largely fall into the same two camps when a wider audience sees it, which is why I’m bothering making this post this early.
So here’s the tl;dr based on these early reviews/impressions: If you’re cool with a comedy movie where you may or may not get all the jokes depending on how much of an anime otaku you are and are just happy to see anything new with Keroro and crew doing wacky high-octane things in it, you’ll probably have a fun time. If you are a stickler for the style of movies 1-5 (or more serious parts of the show like the Garuru arc) and want that again except they have iPhones now, or are hoping for a big lore bombshell plot for the anniversary, you should probably recalibrate your expectations. (Disclaimer, I haven’t seen any spoilers about Aruru and Deruru’s supposed connection to the platoon that early marketing teased so there might be some lore/surprise fanservice that I haven’t heard about.) We’ll see what more people have to say after the second preview screening on the 16th and then when it hits theaters on the 26th, but at the end of the day I think this is gonna be a YMMV movie to the max, so don’t take anyone else’s word for it 100%. I just wanted to give a heads-up on what to expect now that the opinions are out there, and I’ll probably revisit this when it does become accessible overseas.
Am I personally still excited, you ask? I mean, I was probably more excited a month ago than I am now…but all I need is one (1) epic Kururu and Saburo scene to make me start screaming and crying and throwing up so I think I’ll be okay… (I also am genuinely really looking forward to Aruru and Deruru.)
