Unanswered//Butterfly is far from the first anime to be released as a video game extra—in this case the Echoes of Aincrad Ultimate Edition. However, rather than an extra episode or OVA, Unanswered//Butterfly is a full on feature film that clocks in at just under two hours in length.

At its core, Unanswered//Butterfly has a fantastic hook. The heretical-seeming idea of series hero Kirito massacring people in the early days of Sword Art Online is more than enough to get any fan invested. Moreover, the idea of having the story be told not from the viewpoint of Kirito but of two new characters—a pair out for revenge on the Black Swordsman—is likewise compelling. Unfortunately, the application of these ideas is a mixed bag at best.

On the positive side of things, Rex, the first of our characters out to kill Kirito, is an interesting character from top to bottom. Due to an error with how the NerveGear interacts with his brain, he is unable to attack—leaving him only able to use a shield for defence. This weakness weighs upon him—as does having to rely on Emirun, a 14-year-old that he tutored in the real world. He is serious and goal oriented—which clashes with Emirun’s immature and flighty personality. He also has more than a few layers of hidden depths that completely change how we view his character over the course of the film—making him the movie’s stand-out character.

Emirun, on the other hand, is completely unsuited for her role in the plot—i.e., as a young woman driven to get revenge on a man by killing him. Her flighty and impulsive nature are taken to insane extremes. In the span of just a few minutes, she goes from depressed and angry at the murder of her friends during their funeral, to throwing a childish tantrum in response to another players provocations. This is followed immediately by her enjoyably chowing down on food and fangirling out at a concert. Over the course of the film, her constantly jumping from one emotional extreme to another is exhausting at best, annoying at worst. And while her bouncing back easily is a main facet of her character—and one acknowledged by the plot—she is so rarely focused on revenge that it makes her main goal seem secondary.

Her personality also gives the film an uneven tone. While fun and silly things do happen in Sword Art Online, at this point in the story, things are relatively dire. The survivors are still figuring out the best way to clear floors, people continue to die in sizable numbers, and PKers have begun their murder sprees. But Emirun often treats Sword Art Online like the game it was supposed to be rather than the life-or-death struggle it actually is. The film itself plays along with this—with the music and direction emphasizing the fun to the point that I can’t help but wonder if this aspect of the movie is supposed to be a kind of commercial for the attached game.

As for the main pair of Sword Art Online heroes, Asuna plays the role of Emirun and Rex’s mentor—training them in the more advanced aspects of the game. However, little does she know that the person they are out to kill is Kirito. And, at the same time, she herself is hunting Kirito, trying to understand why the person she has gotten to know more than any other has become a murderer.

Meanwhile, the Kirito we catch glimpses of is not himself. He is always on edge, eyes wildly looking at those he meets as the orange criminal icon hovers above his head. It serves as a scarlet letter of sorts, leaving him isolated from society as other players flee from him while the system itself prevents him from entering towns. Viewing him from the outside, he’s legitimately intimidating and the mystery of his sudden fall keeps the film engaging throughout.

The other issue with the film is a visual one. Now, to be clear, this is not a dig at the animation team. While it’s odd at first glance that this film was done by Polygon Pictures rather than Sword Art Online‘s usual studio A-1 Pictures, the 3DCG animation fits this VR world well and the fight scenes range from adequate to absolutely awesome.

The actual problem comes in the form of the characters. Emirun’s character design (along with the Echoes of Aincrad characters) clashes with those of the returning and background characters. The two tone nature of her hair, the flower accessories she wears, and even the colors of her armor do not match the established visual aesthetic for the early days of Sword Art Online. It breaks the immersion of the world in an odd way as she clearly doesn’t seem to belong there.

On the music side of things, the general soundtrack is passable and the insert song, “Reach for the Rainbow” by Iori (Kato LEIA) and LaLa (Rina), is good enough to sell the idol characters as such.

All in all, I like what Unanswered//Butterfly i trying to do more than what it actually does. Emirun is so out of place both visually and in personality that it undercuts the story the film is attempting to tell. On the other hand, Rex is an interesting character to add into the chaos of Sword Art Online and the entire mystery surrounding Kirito’s murderous turn keeps viewer investment in the plot high—especially if you’re a long time fan.

And while I feel this film is certainly worth watching to anyone who loves Sword Art Online, the fact that the bar to entry is $110—a full $40 above buying the Echoes of Aincrad game on its own—feels ludicrous. If you have the money to burn—and you’re super interested in both the game and this film—then by all means, go for it. If not… well, maybe Crunchyroll or some other streaming service will get the rights to it sometime in the future.

Huey Lewis shared just how much his relationship to music has changed in a recent podcast interview.

“I’m basically deaf,” the former lead singer of Huey Lewis and the News said in an episode of the “Inside of You” podcast released Tuesday. “My life has changed immeasurably. I can’t hear music. Music is not part of my life anymore, which is a hard pill to swallow.”

Lewis explained that he uses a cochlear implant to help him hear and understand speech, but he is unable to distinguish pitch because of the way the device operates.

“My cochlear implant, it breaks everything down into digital bits so I can understand,” he said. “Speech is easier to listen to than music. Music occurs in all frequencies, with overtones and harmonics and everything. It comes at you in a lot of different frequencies, so it distorts for me … It makes pitch impossible to hear.”

”The Power of Love” singer explained that because of this, he can no longer enjoy music.

“When I cook or I have people over for dinner, I always used to play them music,” he said. “I have a great collection of old big band stuff and old New Orleans jazz and I don’t play it at all anymore. … It’s weird. I can hear the beat, I know what’s going on. But I can’t enjoy it.”

“Music used to be so much fun,” he added. But “it just ends up being frustrating for me when I can’t enjoy it. I can’t feel the warmth.”

Lewis previously discussed his struggles with hearing loss with The Times. The “Hip to Be Square” singer said his Meniere’s disease diagnosis in early 2018 was “brutal.”

“When it first happened, I thought I might as well kill myself,” Lewis said in the 2020 interview, which described him as being “surprisingly upbeat” for someone whose life was so deeply affected by the diagnosis. Meniere’s disease is a disorder of the inner ear that can cause severe dizziness, ringing in the ears, hearing loss and ears feeling congested, according to the NIH. Not much is known about its causes and there is not yet a cure.

While it’s clear that Lewis misses aspects of his musician life, he also appears to appreciate having time for his other passions since his life doesn’t revolve around being on the road performing 75 to 100 shows a year.

“I fish a lot,” Lewis said in the “Inside of You” podcast. “I love to fly fish and I love Mother Nature. I get out there by myself in a stream and I’m conducting nature with my fly rod and it’s just a wonderful thing. I love to do it, and hearing not required.”

The fashions and furnishings of Czechoslovakia in the 1980s — the height of the state’s racist program of suppressing the Roma population through coerced sterilization — are painstakingly evoked in Slovakian filmmaker Ivan Ostrochovský’s “Only Beautiful Things to Look At.” But the film’s attractive yet oddly bloodless presentation gives the impression of a period drama set much farther back, as though we’re peering at the prettily mounted arrowheads and artifacts of a long-gone atrocity through museum glass. Alongside the decision to centralize the perspective of a white female doctor, this old-school, soft-focus approach robs an undeniably well-intentioned movie of a vital edge of urgency and discomfort, allowing viewers to consign the cruelties it outlines to some imaginary distant past, when in truth, the sterilization policy continued well into the 21st century in both the Czech and Slovak Republics. 

The film begins with a montage of young Roma women, each shot as though for a studio portrait, impassively absorbing an offscreen voice lecturing them about family planning. “Sterilization,” the voice concludes disingenuously, “allows Gypsy women to improve their family’s quality of life.” The intention behind the portraiture is noble: to put faces to a crime more often recounted in impersonal statistics, when it is acknowledged at all. But although framed and lit with dignity by cinematographer Juraj Chlpík, none of these Roma women speak. The first words of argument or protest we hear are from Ingrid (Anna Geislerová), the film’s white protagonist, and she is not talking about reproductive rights at all. Instead, she is facing an all-male panel of her peers as she interviews for the role of head doctor at the hospital where she works. Ingrid knows the position will very likely go to one of her male colleagues, but that doesn’t stop her being angry and disappointed when it actually does.

Outside her work at the hospital, which in large part comprises assessing and performing the sterilizations in a procedure that leaves patients with a small scar beneath the navel nicknamed “the bow,” Ingrid has what can only be described as a beautiful life. With her music teacher husband Maros (Vlad Ivanov), she lives in a gorgeous house in the countryside, where her bedroom, glass-paned on two sides overlooking a lush forest, looks almost like a fairytale princess’ lair. In the warm-lit evenings she and Maros read and drink wine and listen to classical music; on her days off she goes for walks in the forest or, when it’s hot, visits the nearby river and looks on benignly as Roma children bob along playfully on tire tubes.

It is only through her burgeoning friendship with Agata (a radiant Simona Boledovičová), a sweet-natured orderly who is reticent about her Romani idenitity, that Ingrid eventually starts to become uncomfortable with the work she does helping the hospital meet its government-recommended quotas for sterilizations. Ostrochovský’s film, co-written with Marek Leščák, is not anything quite as crude as a white savior narrative, but it is certainly one that assumes the best conduit for a wide audience to understand the cruelty visited on Czechoslovakian Roma families, is the moral awakening of a white woman. 

This faulty focus is particularly frustrating because Agata’s own story, and the manner in which she comes to reconcile herself with her Roma background, is by far the more intriguing narrative strand. As an orphan, Agata was separated from her sister Jula (an excellent Eva Mores), with each then going on to lead very different lives. Jula married within the Roma community, has had two children and is pregnant with an unwanted third. Agata, who at first barely acknowledges their connection, has been more independent, living with a roommate and working at the hospital, and recently getting serious with a boyfriend. “He’s white?” queries Jula in surprise when she hears that he’s a soldier. “Good for you.”

The tides of unspoken resentment and disapproval that flow between the sisters are fascinating, with Agata able to move between Jula’s world, in a cramped flat in a crumbling building where kids play in dirty stairwells, and Ingrid’s enviably refined domestic environment. Eventually, just like Chlpík’s limpid camera, Agata comes to see the beauty in both, when in the film’s most moving moment, the sisters tacitly reconcile while Jula’s kids splash about in the tub at bathtime. There would have been the opportunity here to probe the long-term consequences for the Roma women bearing “the bow,” many of whom had been conned into a procedure that was misrepresented to them, in a language they did not speak, or in documentation they could not read.

Instead, the film insistently returns us to Ingrid. As she’s kept awake by the first stirrings of her conscience, as she lazes in rumpled white bedsheets watching a beetle trundle across her pillow, as she’s depicted in macro close-ups that emphasize the blondeness of her hair, the fairness of her skin, the blueness of her eyes. Indeed, right up to a finale which resolves the remaining conflict with a rather glib miracle, the film’s loveliness practically becomes a liability, placing the real plight of the Roma several removes of perspective and aesthetic manipulation away, until you begin to wonder why we’re being given only beautiful things to look at, when there are so many ugly things that better warrant the attention.