So I guess what happens when you drop all your mediocre shows is you end up with only good shows to talk about every week. Fascinating. Let us explore this phenomenon at greater length.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders 18: Oh man, I really liked this episode. It started off pretty slow, in spite of the entertainment of Joseph being terrible at both bargains and camels, but this week’s Stand fight was a lot of fun. Unlike with Lovers, it actually felt like the Jojos were in serious danger this time, and it was an open question of how they’d figure their enemy out. Additionally, this episode’s visual design really made the most of a conflict that essentially involved the Jojos getting super hot and hiding in a hole for a while – I particularly loved the crazy heat-dreamscapes and equally crazy laughs. The ultimate resolution was super dumb, but the show actually reveled in that dumbness, and it didn’t diminish any of the prior drama – it worked, it was just a silly reveal. And if that weren’t enough, Joseph finally upgraded from “OH NOOO” to “SON OF A BITCH,” which is clearly also a cause for celebration. Nice work, Jojos. I am very entertained. 
Sword Art Online II 5: Solid episode this week! The plot moved forward, Sinon remained a compelling character (outside of one dumb scene), and we were granted a very entertaining action finale. I had few actual complaints, but still managed to find plenty of stuff to be silly about. 
Barakamon 5: Another simply good episode of Barakamon this week. The show has proven itself a tremendously stable platform at this point – the characters are likable, their interactions are genuine, and each episode has its own quirks that give it a definable flavor. This week’s big art theme was another understandable one – the desire to impart some kind of grandeur on the suffering of the art experience. Creating art is a tremendous struggle, no doubt, but Sensei was kind of going about things in the opposite direction here – instead of trying to help the kids express what they wanted to, he just wanted to make sure they understood what a hard thing his work is. That led into the breezier beach half, which ended with Sensei at his most moe and featured some wonderfully Yotsuba-esque Naru moments. This show makes slice of life look easy.
Aldnoah.Zero 5: I had a lot to say about this episode, enough that I ended up accidentally writing a post about it. HOW DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING???
Hunter x Hunter 141: God damn is it nice to see this show having fun again. This was a classic episode of HxH, engaging, exciting, and gleefully inventive from beginning to end. It started off strong with the introduction of the top sixteen election nominees – I loved that Leorio apparently proved himself the third-most-capable candidate by virtue of punching Ging in the face, and I love that Biskey is apparently now capitalizing on her maybe questionable reputation. Then we got some classic mental games as the politics of the Zoldyck household continue to be revealed, followed by a crazy car “chase” and some wonderful Hisoka faces. They’re really doing great work portraying Killua’s Godspeed ability – it’s generally tricky to convey tremendous speed in a way that isn’t just vaguely metaphorical, but the unique specifics of Killua’s ability allow them to effectively depict it through dust and lightning. And it’s a very good sign that whatever thread next week decides to pick up on, I’m eager to see it continued – be it the election itself, the Hisoka-Gotoh fight, or whatever Killua’s about to run into, all of this narrative’s current threads are brimming with potential.
Also Alluka is still adorable.
Zankyou no Terror 4: Just kidding, I’m actually an episode behind on this because I kept planning to write about it and thus kept putting it off. That worked out well. The good news is releasing my Chimera Ant post means I’m completely current on larger projects, so I shouldn’t have trouble catching up this weekend. See you then!
You liked this episode of JoJo? That is a pretty unpopular opinion there. Most of the fan really disliked this episode since it made Joseph too much like an idiot, when he was pretty much everyone’s favorite JoJo (at this point at least). david pro does treats him better than the manga did, but it couldn’t really save this episode in most fan’s eyes. I believe the OVA did it better since it gave the clueless one’s role to Polnareff (which wouldn’t surprise anyone) and don’t have the “I can’t believe you’re my grandfather,” line from Jotaro. Though VS Debaters probably love this episode; this is the second time we’ve seen the FTL tendency Stands has (the first timr during the Hanged Man fight).
Where are you getting this from? I haven’t seen much discontent amongst the fanbase. It was a really fun episode.
Sure if you’d still been holding out hope that Joseph was going to back to his silly level of ultraTRICKS and be really awesome in every fight it might have been a little disappointing but he’s gotten old and it’s not his story anymore, he doesn’t get the same Main Character bullshit allowance that he used to be able to spend freely.
Plus he steals the show anyway.
It’s one thing to not be the main character, but he’s been relegated to butt-monkey. I would honestly prefer him to have not been in the season at all then to have a Joesph who is basically a completely different character. Every time he acts in a way that is just contrary to how his character should act it breaks immersion and kills the mood of the show. This season has been by far the worst of the three, and this episode was basically taunting Joesph fans. What started as a solid episode turned into one of the worst so far by a single scene.
I cannot agree more. I was so excited to see Joseph working his way through the problem rationally. Then everyone else starts laughing manically as if they lost their mind. But it turns out they all just figured out the trick at basically the same time and had the exact same retarded reaction, and dumb old man wasn’t smart enough to figure it out. I actually liked the solution, but I hated the way it was presented. Joesph was an intelligent character. Of the others only Kakyouin has been shown to be smart, and not nearly on the same level that Joseph was. It’s as if the writers of this episode were just intentionally taunting Joesph fans. Ruined what would otherwise have been a pretty solid episode for me. Honestly I would prefer Joesph not be in this season at all if all they are going to do is use him as the butt of jokes for poor comic relief. I hate downgraded character writing like this, it’s lazy and inconsistent and a constant immersion breaker. I don’t buy that the same Jojo who was outsmarting the Pillar Men last season would be this consistently dumb.
Well, you’ve gotta remember, it’s been 50 years since battle tendency; He’s almost 70 at this point, and he’s still spry and perceptive enough to keep up with all the young folk after years without any sort of practice.
Also, it’s not the “writers”, it’s the author; the manga of part 3 was published between 1989 and 1992.
“only Kakyoin has been shown to be smart.”
Haha. Thanks for telling me that I can disregard your opinions, TIA.
Is it? I’m always kind of surprised to see people get annoyed when any of the Jojos act particularly silly – for me, they’re incredibly silly whether they’re being “awesome” in a Jojo sense or actually falling off a camel. Joseph’s crazy solutions and “next you’ll say” comments have always relied on an absurd degree of narrative convenience – they’re extremely fun to watch, but I’m laughing as I’m cheering, because they’re also total nonsense. Joseph is my favorite Jojo, but that’s partially because he is and has always been the most charismatically ridiculous Jojo.
Nah, he’s totally bullshitting. From what I’ve gathered, most people were just pleasantly surprised that they managed to get such a good episode out of what was such a short fight in the manga (about 6 pages, iirc).
A lot of people were disappointed by how much he lost his crazy awesomeness. Admittedly only one forum I follow actually shown discontent with the episode (the other one calls it “anticlimax of anticlimax” but still somewhat accepted it) but pretty much every forum I follow (which isn’t all that much, admittedly) was disappointed by how he’s not his old self anymore (though I did argued once that he traded it off for the achievement of being the longest-living JoJo) and this episode embodied everything that was wrong about the treatment of Joseph. Well, either this or Bast Mariah chapter, though he’s not alone on that one at least.
Though the one good thing everyone could agree was Joseph’s VA being awesome. “SON OF A BITCH!”
@Arro
It’s two chapters, with a total of 26 pages I believe. It IS the shortest of all enemies, though. I do have to give props to david production as they were able to make one of the more boring part (nothing to the level of any of the Boingo chapters) of the most boring Part of all JoJos into a pretty decent episode.
Re: fenglengshun
I thought Bast Mariah–although admittedly pretty bad for Joseph–was actually a pretty nice return to Joseph’s old strategic thinking; it ended when he managed to turn his extreme disadvantage into an advantage.
I don’t mind what this week did with Joseph, reason why he didn’t figure out the how the stand works because he was overthinking/overestimating his foe to the point where he couldn’t see an obvious solution. ALso he just had a stand battle brain in the previous ep. That might have something to do with why he wasn’t en point
I was wondering why I hadn’t heard anything about Zankyou 4, because it’s… gorgeous.
Aaagh I know I gotta watch it.
I hope you do an entire writup on the music of Zankyou no Terror. The motorcycle scene from the current episode is so, so damn good I need someone better with words then myself to actually say how good it is.
When Watanabe and Kanno team up, one is almost always sure to receive an aural treat.
So I’ve heard. I should get to it later today.
Nice to know everyone else is just as hung up on it.
I wanted to tell you how awesome that last episode of Zankyou no Terror was, but it looks like everyone already did so… Really looking forward to your writeup on it, you know that theres no way out around it.
And yeah, even without ZnT this looks like another pretty good week. I guess there will be a mid season roundup within the month?
Yep, next week’s post should be that.