Emjayreviews90

Sound! Euphonium is the latest anime from Kyoto Animation, and if I were to describe it in one word it would be beautiful. First-off. Let me come out and say that this Anime may not be for everybody. It is about a concert band and unless you have been in a choir or a band, you will find it hard to relate to the activities that happen on screen. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it is completely un-relatable, it is just that you will have a deeper connection if you have been part of one. The story follows Oumae Kumiko as she joins concert band in high school as a Euphonium player and while it is a series that is very musical, the band is just a setting for all the drama and the character building that happens throughout the series. AS the series progresses, we meet a ton of characters of like Asuka Tanaka, Natsuki Nakagawa, Midore Kawashima, Hazuki Katou, and most importantly Reina Kousaka. A huge chunk, and perhaps all of the first season is devoted to the relationship b...

Yuri in Ice, apart from being an amazing love letter to the world of Figure skating, is one of the best Anime series to come out in the past year. There is so much I want to say about the series but I am afraid of ruining it for anyone who decides to watch it after reading this review. So before I go into a small discussion about the series I do recommend you go and watch it for it is a brilliant piece of art. Yuri on Ice follows Yuri the Japanese National Figure skater after his loss in the World Grand Prix Skating event and how the winner Viktor, a Russian Skater, after seeing one of his routines decides to retire for the next season and coach him. What I told you here is the bare minimum in terms of the plot. Using this simple premise Studio Mappa has managed to construct a beautiful show about Ice Skating, Personal Growth, Drama and Romance. Each and every character in the series has a brilliantly written arc and when you compare the characters they were when they are...

I generally don’t review Indian films, partly because I don’t watch a lot of them and mostly because a lot of them don’t appeal to me. But once in a while a film comes along and blows everything out of the water, with its amazing production and incredible acting, intricate story, flawless pacing and complex story arcs. While Dangal does not tick all the categories completely, it is still the best Indian big budget film that I have seen in a long time and definitely one of the best sports films that I have seen both from Bollywood and Hollywood. Since this is not my normal review I will split it into two simple parts, things that I liked about the film and things that I didn’t like about the film. Before you go any further I do want to warn you that I will be getting into some light spoilers but nothing that can’t be found in the trailer and since it follows a true story we all knows how it is going to end, so I think that it is the experience of watching the film that matters...

I am going to start this post by saying that while the title may be vague, by the end of this post you will understand what it means to me. Around a week back, I had a conversation with one of my closest friends and it was about game series; especially one in particular, Mass Effect. I was talking to him about how it, is one of those things that, transcends its flaws and how it has become such an integral part of how I experience games and stories in general. I described it to him like this; Mass Effect is the series that I want to experience again for the first time. This got me thinking about how much we value our first experiences, be it physical or emotional or intellectual. We have this certain weight attached to our “First Time”. We are living in a world of sensory overload. We experience new and old things left right and center and as time goes on we get desensitized to a lot of them. But once in a while something comes along and it makes us sit up and makes us feel th...

My Mom and I started watching The Crown , A Netflix original Series, about a week back and it will be an understatement if I say that I was blown away by the cinematography and the visuals. Right from the first episode it was apparent that a lot of work went into what was, in essence, a TV Series and this got me thinking if India has something akin to some of the TV series which are produced abroad. If you are even a little bit familiar with what plays on Indian channels as series/serials, then I am sure that you know where this post is going. I really want to go on a rant about how bad everything is in the Indian entertainment industry. I really do. But I have a feeling it will be recycled material, so what I thought I would do, is I will compare some of the techniques foreign TV series and even filmmakers adopt that make a lot of them seem that much more refined. I will be limiting myself to the small screen for the sake of consistency, but I am sure that a few of these e...

Remember how in the earlier Random Talk I mentioned public speaking? That was a direct result of me having to host the Inter DAV Quiz on the 14 th of November at my alma-mater; DAV Gill Nagar. Before I get on with explaining the details of how I ended up hosting the event, I want to share my experience of doing something like this. Before I go on and start writing something funny about my experience I do need to come clean and admit that, contrary to my façade of coolness, this was a very daunting task. A lot of preparation was needed and I would not have been able to do it without the help of so many others. But seeing as how I am a guy with a huge ego, I am going to focus on myself before I mention any of them. I started working on the quiz slides around five days before the event and it started with a gathering of ideas and brainstorming levels. The topic of the quiz was our incredible country India, and it was for students of sixth, seventh and eighth grade. Not grad...

For those of you who are unaware, I am an ex-DAVian from tow DAV schools. I did my mid-school in DAV Gill Nagar and my high-school in DAV Mogappair, and it is almost a ritual at this point for me to attend the Annual Day functions of each school irrespective of what situation I am tied up in at that time. Now there is a specific reason for this, and it is not because I am in anyway interested in seeing the toppers get awards, because I got awards for reasons not related to marks. That reason is Cultural activities and it is that reason that I attend these functions religiously.  Let me be more specific, as to why I am so interested in the cultural activities. When I was in DAV Gill Nagar I was a member of Vijayatarangini, my school choir. Ever since I was in sixth grade I sang with them, and despite losing my voice to puberty when I reached the midway point of ninth grade I continued to be a major part of the choir for my excellent management and planning skills, or so ...

This happens to me a lot of times. Especially in times when I lack proper motivation; or as I like to call them times when I can be lazy and watch movies, lay games and read books without really writing anything myself. And in a way this has been fueled on by the fact that I have had my semester exams going on in the past weeks. This has basically led me to put my mind in Auto Pilot mode and cruise through the weeks, studying and in essence doing just the bare minimum to get through the day without any extra work. I really wanted to change it, and, unfortunately I haven’t gotten the push to do it. Not because the days have been uneventful but rather because of some weird abstract reason which I can’t put into words. Anywho let’s forget about that for the moment, just as I conveniently “forgot” to do anything creatively. What is the point of this post? Honestly, I don’t know. The point of this post is the fact that I don’t have a point; a paradox. Just as the multiple paradoxes ...

Generally I would preface any post that I put up after a long time with a stupid reason as to why I haven’t posted for such a long time. But I think I should just restrict it to random thoughts, because that will just make me seem that much more professional. That being said this review is going to be so far from professional, it will almost appear to be a rant. I watched Inferno last night. The movie was really good and I liked it a lot. Let’s just make one thing clear, if I say the sentence above in front of anybody who likes to say that they watch good movies, they will laugh in my face and call me an idiot. I mean, come on, how is it even remotely possible that a guy who watches movies which people consider art, think Inferno is awesome? Before I get into that part of the post, let me tell you my history with Robert Langdon. The Da-Vinci Code was probably the first novel I read. And this was back when I was in fourth grade. Yes, I was too young to read it, and I did...

Vaayu , directed and scripted by Sreevathson, is the latest play from the drama troupe Dummies and as a beginning to this review, Vaayu is a “drama” unlike anything that I have ever seen before. Before I get any further into the review, here are the cast and crew behind this one of a kind play: Role played Name of the Person Madam PM Mrs Prema Sadhasivam Raju Ji Mr. Bhoo Thirumalai Sanjeev Karthik Bhatt Ramakrishnamoorthy Sridhar Minister Hari Chander R Giridharan Maheshwar CS Raamanathan Bhargav Prasanna Sridharan Suloki Staff Ganesh Daitchu Staff Sai Prasad Minister Dattatri Manikrishnan Tim Huan Aravind Mr Orando Suloki Naagarajan Mussori Naren Aaradh...