Spring 2016 – Week 3 in Review

With this season’s extended preview week finally over, I found myself left with way too many fine shows to watch. Thus, this week was one more return to The Culling, that fun time of year when shows that would be reasonable watches in weaker seasons all get the axe purely for pragmatic reasons. Between full show reviews, Current Projects work, and other various media, I can only really spare the time for a bit more than half a dozen airing shows, and so anything that isn’t truly noteworthy had to be cut. That still didn’t make this easy, of course – this season is good, I want to watch everything I can. But I was able to trim some hedges here and there.

First of all, while Twin Star Exorcists’ second episode was perfectly reasonable, it was perfectly reasonable in a “this is a competent execution of its genre” sort of way. It appears the show really did go all-out in the framing of that premiere, as this episode seemed like it hued much more closely to actual manga panels, leaving much less of visual interest outside of the various stylistic tics the first episode already gave away. On top of that, there were a number of moments here that were outright bad, from the introduction of Benio’s annoying familiar to that apparently timeless “guy walks in on a naked girl” gag, leaving what would likely be a charming enough show in a weaker season to be an easy cut here. This may be one I just burn through for a review eventually, but as for now, I’ll take solace in this ridiculous image of Benio in a bunny suit.

Twin Star Exorcists

I was pretty worried after the opening minutes of this week’s Bakuon. I’d been planning to watch just enough of the episode to justify dropping it, but then the show had to go and start with a ridiculous six-minute Rin backstory involving giraffes and dying fathers and fated Katana motorcycles, and it was looking like I was actually stuck with the show. Fortunately, the middle stretch of the episode had enough dead air to validate a drop, and Bakuon will have to be content with one more “a fine show for a weaker season” participation award.

Bakuon

Next on the chopping block, High School Fleet had a generally competent but not truly gripping second episode, placing it in solid “stall for now, pick up if buzz improves” territory. The greatest thing going for the show right now is its premise – I’m legitimately interested in seeing where all these betrayals and mutinies go, and exactly what kind of story this show wants to be telling. But the journey there is just not that compelling, with the biggest problem being that so far, the show has failed to make its sea battles particularly exciting. A combination of the mediocre CG, fairly flat direction, and lack of real tactical intrigue make the battle sequences here not that much more exciting than the curry-focused ones. Shows like this hang heavily on their moment-to-moment dramatic appeal, and if the big “fight scenes” aren’t cutting it, it’s hard to maintain interest. Maybe in a few weeks, High School Fleet.

High School Fleet

And Joker Game managed to avoid the cutoff, demonstrating with this week’s vignette that its immediate storytelling is strong enough to warrant continuing. This episode confirmed what most people likely expected – with the premise established in the first two-parter, we’ll now be taking turns visiting the individual spies to elaborate their own stories. Collections of vignettes live or die based on the strength of the individual episode, and this episode was tightly written and exciting, a fine mix of wartime drama and cool spy tricks. Joker Game just feels like a polished prime time drama, really – nothing too flashy about its storytelling or delivery, but it’s solidly composed and consistently entertaining. An easy watch.

Joker Game

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure continued to be quite solid this week, though this episode was certainly a step down from last week’s stunner. This was a board-adjusting episode, heavy on the exposition and only just getting to a fight at the end, and it likely could have stood to lose a few minutes overall (especially given the recap opening). But Diamond is Unbreakable’s fundamental design strength and directorial flourishes continue to put it leagues ahead of Stardust Crusaders, even when it’s just being applied to stuff like that great transition into Angelo’s flashback sequence. On top of that, devices like the boarded-up house across the street serve as more indications that Araki knows exactly what legacy he’s mining as far as suburban horror goes. Few shows get to start from as strong of a fundamental platform as this one, and with the Stands already starting to branch out into more creatively specific powers, things are likely to improve from here.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

Kiznaiver‘s second episode was certainly an improvement over the first, partially because it cut down on the egregiously bad dialogue, and partially because we actually got into some fun interactions between the whole cast. The show may be kinda beating us over the head with the emotional secrets of its characters, but honestly, the fact that they have emotional secrets, and that the show is being so quick to reveal them, still makes them feel more textured than many anime characters. Shows often string out one big emotional reveal over an entire series (a dark past, a will-they-or-won’t-they relationship, etc), meaning characters feel kind of like emotional on-off switches. But these characters are being forced to honestly engage with each other from the start, which gives them a lot of potential for relationship-building and personal growth. The show’s still a question mark, but I like a lot of what it’s doing here.

Kiznaiver

Flying Witch actually demonstrated far more restraint in its second episode, which may well disappoint people who were mainly hooked by that great mandrake gag. This episode featured almost no magical elements whatsoever, and its second half was basically just a low-key cooking lesson between the leads. I’d personally be okay with just a bit more humor and fantasy, but the show is certainly very good at maintaining its own specific atmosphere. It’s a place to escape to, and a craft challenge that I’m actually really enjoying writing about. There’s a lot that goes into making a show like this feel like a real and inviting place.

Flying Witch

And The Lost Village was more The Lost Village, meaning it’s still one of the most bizarrely written and directed shows I’ve seen in a long time. It’s actually pretty interesting to see this kind of “bad anime” in action. Normally, when anime are bad, it’s just because they embrace a bunch of established tropes and do nothing with them, giving audiences an expected package with no real personality or creative spirit. But the thing about using those tropes is, even if they don’t result in good stories, they result in comprehensible stories – the plot elements fit together, the characters play coherent roles. The Lost Village, on the other hand, is both completely unusual and completely incomprehensible. Its characters feel ridiculous in a more fundamental and consistently surprising way than most bad anime characters, like any of them could suddenly grow three heads and that wouldn’t be outside of the realm of expectations. It is its own kind of bad.

The Lost Village

My Hero Academia‘s third episode was a pretty clear demonstration of the weaknesses of the show’s adaptation approach. Shonen Jump and Bones are clearly trying to make as conservative use of the source material as possible, meaning this week’s episode was basically entirely dedicated to a fairly underwhelming training session. It’s almost certainly a choice designed to make My Hero Academia a sustainable and semi-regular production, but this speed of adaptation certainly isn’t lending itself to the best possible anime. That said, the show is still fundamentally strong in a variety of ways, from its clear articulation of the true tenets of heroism (giving of yourself, working hard even if you’re uncertain that effort will be repaid, humility in the face of victory) to the various great All Might moments scattered throughout. My Hero Academia isn’t as strong as it could be, but it’s still a fine show, and only going to get better once it hits the manga’s stronger material.

My Hero Academia

And finally, this week’s Concrete Revolutio was absurdly dense, seemingly trying to cram into twenty minutes every single lingering plot thread that last week’s Shiba-focused narrative avoided. We got more context on the true fate of the Fumers, for one thing, which was actually a big relief. Even during the early minutes of this episode, I was worried the Fumers were going to present an antagonist that existed outside of the contrasting goals and philosophies of the show’s main characters – a true “villain.” Creating a force like that would significantly cheapen the contrast between the well-constructed sides of the show, so I was glad to see that issue resolve itself by concluding another purely plot-oriented conflict, the nature of Jiro’s abilities. On top of that, the actual scene that resolved those conflicts was an absolute stunner – Concrete Revolutio isn’t a consistently beautiful show, but the battle between Jiro and the Fumers was a gorgeous animation highlight.

There were lots of other interesting bits and pieces scattered throughout this episode, even though the overall construction muddled the dramatic impact a bit. I liked the complicated resolution of the situation the idols found themselves in, when after siding with both the students and the military, they found themselves betrayed by their one consistent ally, commerce. Aki’s feelings were totally understandable – having seen the generation before her betrayed by belief in some greater justice, she simply wanted what was best for herself and the people she loved. But in times like this, even if you’ve given up on a better future, you can’t really remain apolitical – that itself becomes a political act when the ground beneath you is moving. And so she’s forced to understand a bit of what Jiro cares about purely due to the forces naturally arrayed against her.

Other characters were a little worse-served by this plot. Having Emi and Kikko simply chasing Jiro around isn’t really the most compelling use of their characters, though I do like the ways those two bounce off each other. They’re not a natural set of partners in the way Jiro and Kikko were, so I’d like to see their own relationship evolve in his absence. But it’ll be tough for much of that to happen if they’re just consistently chasing Jiro’s scarf.

Still, this episode managed to cram a ridiculous amount of content into one self-contained story, once again demonstrating Concrete Revolutio as a show with almost too damn much to say. I am beyond happy to have this strange, wonderful creation back.

Concrete Revolutio

7 thoughts on “Spring 2016 – Week 3 in Review

  1. You know what your write-up of Hai-Fury (High School Fleet) made me think of? C3-bu. The show that seemed to be about one thing, then had that crazy vision-esque episode, then went back to the first thing. And then suddenly became another show altogether.

    The sort of show you expect to hear buzz about, but often there’s next to anyone left with the show by the time it’s over to let you know how it actually fared on the journey, let alone being able to describe the journey succinctly. Heh. But yeah, the first episode definitely sounded interesting enough for me to actually keep an ear out for. But if we’re all waiting for feedback from other people, who will we get feedback from?

    • The obvious answer becomes “people who will watch cute girls in ships regardless of how good it is,” and then the obvious response to that is “but how useful is their recommendation anyway.” It’s a tough spot, lol.

      • It’s an issue when we all stick with the same prospective shows. We should start a pool and make sure they’re all covered.

        At least Bungo Stray Dogs has enough people whose opinions will be informative and relevant enough to our own still sticking with it. I mean, where would we be if everyone dropped ConRevo in episode 3 or Samumenco in episode 7? Heh. And to think I originally wasn’t going to watch Gatchaman Crowds episode 2.

  2. Are you going to watch Macross Delta? That one will never get an official release, so might as well jump on now.

    • I’m planning to. I actually watched and enjoyed the first episode, but still haven’t caught up altogether.

  3. Thanks for that explanation on Concrete Revolutio. I got a little lost in everything going on. Very dense, but at the same time very rewarding. Haruka makes an interesting comment on her name as being “vague” (her name literally means “spring, fall, winter”), and the fact that her name can also mean “distant” points to her own sense of alienation from a concept she once held dear. To see how time has worn down these heroes is a bit sad to watch, but it helps in making their characters that much deeper.

    As for MHA, I was actually wondering about the pacing. I’m honestly enjoying every moment of the show so far, but I guess it is a little slow for a hero show. They even ended just before we were able to get a glimpse of Midoriya’s new powers. Looks like it’ll get a second cour at this rate, but that’s not really something to complain about I think. 🙂

  4. I’ll be happy to keep watching High School Fleet, despite its many weaknesses. Of course I don’t have a blog, so, eh.

    I actually had no intention of watching it originally, based on the season preview bloggings, but some comment somewhere got me to at least check it out.

    I think the biggest weakness is that it’s not taking the time to introduce the various crews very well. GuP and Hibike! both had large casts, but managed to define them and gradually grow your awareness of them at a steady pace throughout. HSF just sort of throws a bunch at you with no context, and only a few seconds for each group as their names are called out. It’s like it’s saying, “We’re not going to have time to do proper introductions of these characters later, so we’ll just through a bunch of names out and pretend.”

    On the other hand, it’s not a complete loss. For as little time as they’ve had, all of the bridge crew are pretty distinct; the lookout is easily recognizable; the doctor has a nice flavor; and it looks like Kuro+Shiro is a thing.

    As for the battles… unfortunately, having a single ship means you don’t have the flexibility of allowing partial losses like in GuP. And being a destroyer means any single hit is likely to sink them, which means they can’t allow any real hits to land. I think things will get more interesting when they join up with the childhood friend’s battleship, assuming the hints that this is a mass mutiny across the entire fleet hold true.

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