"You shouldn't have done that..."

This is good. I mean... genuinely good. I mean... "I'm surprised you haven't taken time off machinima to make more short flash animations instead for the time being" good. I'd love a short series of these. Your first series of Arby 'n Chief was great because of their opinions of games and the humour coming from Chief, I'd love it if the comedy from that series (before you added "drama") was incorporated into your animations. For your first attempt as well this is actually kick-ass. Anyway. I have no idea if you're gonna read these reviews because you're too busy with the current series of Arby 'n Chief, but if you do, take on our praise.
I liked the art. It was simplistic in its design and given the concept of the video, I thought it was all the better for it. Voice acting was, as usual, sweet.
Seriously, make more of these.

---
Noko

A worthy tribute to a mediocre anime.

Don't get me wrong, Sonic X is a great show in it's own rights, it's just the third series with Star Trek traits everywhere we looked was just ridiculous. Also Chris was a dick.
This flash however, was much better.

If Chakra-X had just not released Nazo Unleashed, I'm betting fans wouldn't have been disappointed with this magnificent piece of art. Only the potential was way better than the result. This seemed more like a music video than an actual serial. Maybe that was the intention? If that was the case then the trailer, released 4 years ago was perhaps a bit misleading, no?

You'd have to forgive us then for expecting several "episodes" of what we expected would be a whole series, rather than a one-off viewing experience. We expected huge battles on a planetary scale, magnificent voice acting (and NOT just sound clips from the games and make it sound like they were swearing, I'm looking at YOU Chakra!), and maybe less of a sudden "stop" of an ending. If this animation turned out to be that, I, and everyone else who gave this review a score less than 6, would have given much more praise. Again, it was that damn trailer that put us off. And what put me off giving you a "9".

For what it was in the end, it was fan-fucking-tastic. The 3D was a nice touch for the emeralds, a brilliant soundtrack, and the animation...

Nazo Unleashed had brilliant art, but the animation itself (I'm going by the literal term of "animate") was sometimes too clunky, yet fans were too distracted by the flashing lights and overused super transformations to notice. This on the other hand has better art, for most of the time, and the animation was... aww..... I jizz. It was amazing. Even though some of it was copied off the original anime.

There were a couple of plot holes here and there but seeing as this was by all means a music video, it wasn't a huge issue.

Closing words;
Damn you, trailer! Damn you to hell!

Bless your face,
Peace off.

I love a good Tobuscus reference.

Overrated. Yeah I went there

This review is to the series as a whole.

Well... what can I say? From the dramatic death of Luigi in the beginning which wooed us all (especially me) all the way to the suicide of Mario at the end. It leaves me speechless. Wait, no that's a big fat lie. It was terrible, poorly executed, cliched, and overall not very satisfying.

And yes I am well aware of the fact that not ALL movies and series' have happy endings. I should know, I've watched "Children of Earth". But this was not at all the great (or satisfying at the VERY least) conclusion I was expecting it to be.

Now I'd say something about the acting, but that's another thing since it's a sprite movie. VGDC's "Rise Of The Mushroom Kingdom" was (and still is) one of my favorite Mario series', and it was also clever in the aspect that it did not require voice acting for one second(excluding the occasional remarks from the brothers).

Reading text off of the screen for an 8-bit movie is not a very good idea. For the first 2 episodes, maybe. Even some mouth movement in sync with the text (if that makes any logical sense) would've been acceptable, and I wouldn't have ranted on like this.

Now CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT was mixed. As I said before, Luigi's death was heartbreaking (for a sprite movie at least), but then after that everything went sort of...naff.

...as you can probably tell that's NOT the word I was looking for, but nevertheless my point still stands. It was one emo speech after another. YES we're aware that Bowser is gonna attack the Kingdom (not the most ORIGINAL idea, but you still made it work well for most of the time). YES we know that lives are at stake, but you don't need to emphasize it so much!
We're also reminded of Luigi's death too many times it becomes an excuse for Mario to act all depressed and sad, and I didn't mind that. I can closely relate, I've lost relatives when I was a child but I don't spend the rest of my fucking life moaning about it.

We then have this action packed battle that we get to see (AT LAST!!!!!!!!) and I have to say, it was fan-fucking-tastic. Sprite animations were some of the best I've ever seen! But we are reminded that they ARE sprites and no animation or emotion on their faces, and that keeps making me feel unsympathetic towards the Toads. But then, when everything seems bleek, WOO! Peach is finally saved...

...and then she dies. Score 1-0 to "FUCK'S SAKE!". With all the emo atmosphere of the previous episodes though, who COULDN'T see her death coming? Well, I'll give you some credit since I didn't fully expect that the lava would be the way to go, and the clip of her death WAS pretty hardcore and executed quite well.

So the fans have their sad death. And what are we left with in the final 60 seconds? The final emo rant from Mario about loss and other emo crap (again from text which was almost a chore instead of entertainment and had no emotional impact whatsoever), and then...yeah. A suicide. Probably the most unimaginative way to go at the end of a series. And I didn't feel remotely sorry for him. Luigi's death was as far as I could go for sympathy, but this IS a sprite film, so Mario's goofy and pixel-led face made it more humorous and stupid, instead of depressing.

OK before I get too critical of this, I'll just fully round this off.

The Good
-Character Development (Episodes 1/2, and 3 to a certain extent)
-Extra points for Character Development considering it was a sprite film, and not many people can do that well.
-FANTASTIC animations and tweening. Your work with flash&sprites is amazing!
-The entire plot itself was one of the more original we've had, but...

The Bad
-...as a sprite movie, you can only do so much, and the plot didn't tie-in together all too well.
-Too many emotional rants that it eventually became stupid and tiresome.
-One of the more unimaginative endings I've seen in a series (and not just sprite series')
-Payoff from all the hype from previous installments just wasn't there...

The Ugly
-Ha! just kidding lolz (would ya believe it?!)

Overall Score (Episode/Series): 5.6/6.2

Awesome

Mabye a Wi-Fi play mode so you can play with people on Newgrounds. Then THAT would deserve a 10/10. But it was still good

Cool

good interactive part for IMP 8. I enjoyed killing John. and tell Zody to try and keep intrests in his movies instead of giving up. I think his drawing are awesome. I heard that John is leaving the IMP series soon. Oh well he sucked. On a completely diffrent subject. On your deviantart account you were talking about rumours for Sonic Next Gen. Then you said you didn't know anything about Sonic Wii (which is called Sonic Wild Fire just so you know.) well here's what I heard. He has been captured in Fairytale by his enemies (which suprisingly isn't Dr Eggman) and as you keep on progressing through the game he goes into more and more chapters to try and escape. I saw footage of it and it looks awesome. I'm getting a Wii. What are you getting? anyway enough about Sonic. Good flash and I can't wait to see more flashes like this one

Split my mind dude!

Master this shit(Y)!

I'm feeling mixed emotions here so bare with me :P.

OK, this is not a good demo I'm hearing. But the reason I also love this (I think I'm high right now XD) is because I'm hearing the basis for a GREAT song.

The beginning riffs are not something I'd want to hear on a Slayer record, Killswitch Engage, or any other metal band because it's a bit bland. I'd recommend a constant drum beat that ISN'T following the rhythm of the guitars, but diverse enough to get alot of attention. Which brings me to the guitars.

On a Metal track, I'd usually be hearing a rhythm guitar, with the lead doing something else (which is CRUCIAL for an instrumental). I hate it when both are playing the same thing, if they're leaving silent gaps in the middle (I'm referring to the first minute of this song). The melody there is great, but the rhythm (guitar) should be doing something to keep the song going during those dreadful silent moments. I know they're not long but they can be frustrating. Unless you're going for a Slipknot-esque thing.

On a more POSITIVE note, about 1:05 onward you DEFINITELY had a great thing going here. Reminds me of something I'd hear from Bullet For My Valentine. The problem with this part though is that it was hard to adjust from the HEAVY intro to the more METALCORE (google it if you don't know). 1:40 was a nice touch, and the change to the acoustic melody was a much more bearable transition. HOWEVER, I got really bored at hearing the same thing for 30-40 seconds. I'm aware there was a lead part playing but I wish it was longer.

We're back to the heavy stuff now and again, you might want to improve the transition there aswell.

The BEST part of the entire piece was 3:27 and you had an amazing little thing going on there mate! But again, the lead and rhythm are playing the same melody, leaving those irritable silent gaps in the middle >:(. Thankfully there were slightly less noticable so thank you for that!

Er...I think that just about covers it! I would suggest making another versions of this before you try vocals.

Please don't be disheartened by that 6, that's a nice 6! He wants to be your friend!....OK I'm high. Hope you didn't mind this pretty long review and I anticipate your future works!

-Noko

Seeing as you're still experimenting...

It's probably a bit too "major" sounding to fit that description you gave. And I most definitely do agree with what you said in your blog about trying to improve transitions between melodies because it's obvious here.

You're getting there though, as your original score for the Hard Justice finale was pretty impressive!

Sorry about the 6, but I can't do it to myself to be biased towards one of my favourite authors. Cue the mass number of hate-mails from 8-year old fans.....

-Noko

Uncompleted

Nice rhythm guitar notes, great melody, awful lyrics.
Use the word "fuck" all you want, but the problem is you just seemed to take whatever rhymed and threw it in the lyrics, and it didn't really have an impact as such. Not on me anyway. Unlike Metallica or another metal band with their lyrics (if you know what they're saying). I don't mind changes from a major sound to a minor sound, but it didn't really fit into this song. Especially with god-awful lyrics like that. It sounded improvised. And improvisation is good, but not when you release a song like this on a CD for $11.90 (which to me translates as £7. Which doesn't really seem worth it). I'm sure your fans would disagree, but oh well it's your life.

Sound: 6.8/10
Lyrics: 4/10
Everything else: 7/10

Overall: 6/10.