Welp, looks like it’s time for the second wave of new summer premieres. This one’s a pretty questionable crop, frankly – sweetness & lightning is fantastic and Cheer Boys!! is perfectly reasonable, but outside of that, we’re looking at a whole bunch of middling-to-poor genre pieces without all that much to distinguish them. There are still a fair number of premieres to come, but things are looking a little dire at the two-thirds point this time. But hey, you get to read my increasingly despairing reviews either way, so, good deal!
Yearly Archives: 2016
Is The Lost Village Actually A Comedy?
I mean, you and I know the answer to that. But The Lost Village’s style is awesome and unique and very worth digging into, and so today I’ve got a huge friggin’ article exploring the specific nature of The Lost Village’s charms. I loved this show, and I had a ton of fun talking about it here. The craft of comedy is just really fascinating in general, and I’m sure I’ll return to it again at some time. But for now, let’s just celebrate the glory of Lovepon and Friends one more time.
Is The Lost Village Actually A Comedy?
Nana – Episode 2
That’s pretty much the plot of Nana’s second episode. We’re in flashback territory now, as we learn about the end of Nana’s high school life and the beginning of her time at art school. She falls in love, is rejected, falls in love, is ignored, falls in love, is forgotten, and finally falls in love with someone who’s actually interested in her. Unfortunately, her eventual “boyfriend’s” interest is of a pretty limited and predatory type – the man she falls for is married, and he is only willing to meet with her for sex a few times a month. Nana is being used, but as a naive and love-struck high school student, she doesn’t have much recourse.
Summer 2016 – First Impressions, Part One
Preview week has begun in earnest, and I am dead. The season actually feels pretty frontloaded this time – Orange and Love Live Sunshine have already both confirmed my hype, and DAYS has shown up as an unexpected new challenger. There’s also the usual scattering of mediocre-to-abysmal shows out there, but hey, every medium is mostly crap. It already seems like this season will have a handful of shows worth keeping up with, and that’s good enough for me!
Yuureitou – Volume 2
“They say her voice was as beautiful as that of a goddess.” That’s one of the few things Amano learns about Rika, the woman who supposedly tied her own stepmother to the clock’s face. What would lead a person to do that, and what her own thoughts might have been… all of this can only be inferred, refracted through secondary sources with their own ambiguous motives. All pictures of her were burned, and now she exists only as a distant wraith in the background of a single photo, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of feminine hysteria.
Shounen Hollywood – Review
Today I went back to check out one of the very first shows I covered for ANN, Shonen Hollywood. The show definitely held up; Shohari is almost uniquely pointed in its approach to the idol industry, and even though its aesthetics are pretty crap all around, the writing is good enough that it’s still definitely worth a watch. I’m glad writing for ANN has given me the chance to branch out and discover shows like this, that I may never have found on my own time.
You can check out my full review over at ANN!
Spring 2016 – Week 13 in Review
The spring season came to a full end this week, finishing off with a double helping of Flying Witch to help make up for our dearly departed Lost Village and Conrevo. Most of the other shows I’ve been watching have been pretty consistent, and this week confirmed that – Kiznaiver’s conclusion was the best it could be given the circumstances of its existing narrative, My Hero Academia finished a fairly simple arc with as much passion as it could muster, and Flying Witch charmed for every dang minute. Luluco was probably the biggest upset, as its fairly strong conclusion raised my overall impression of the show a tick. And heck, if I just pretend the cameo episodes never happened, it’s even better!
Anyway, enough preamble. Let’s sweep up the season’s loose ends and RUN ‘EM DOWN!
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time – Review
Funimation finally rereleased Hosoda’s first original film, so I got to take another look at one of my favorite movies. The film is still a bit awkward in its construction, rambling in the middle act and arriving at an awkwardly exposition-heavy conclusion, but it’s also full of so many charming scenes that it’s hard not to love. Makoto is just the best – her enthusiasm brings the whole film to life, and makes her adventures a joy to experience. How can you not like someone who expresses such genuine delight at learning she can use time travel to regain the pudding her sister stole? It may have some clear lows, but the energetic highs make The Girl Who Leapt Through Time a charming debut all the same.
You can check out my big review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Planetes – Episode 6
In today’s episode of Planetes, Hachi and Tanabe arrive at the moon only to discover it’s full of weebs.
I mentioned in my last writeup that I was fairly, but not one hundred percent sure Planetes was in on the joke. That episode was silly, but it still conformed to something resembling a conventional narrative shell. Some of its camp was clearly intentional, but the underlying humor of the contrived story didn’t have to be. It might have just been an unintentionally funny episode.
Flying Witch – Episodes 11-12
Flying Witch concluded with a double dose of warm fuzzies this week, featuring flying whales and new robes and lots of delicious hotcakes. The flying whale was easily one of the show’s most overtly magical moments, but basically everything here was top shelf Flying Witch. Now that the show is over, I realize I was kind of taking Flying Witch for granted – the show was uniformly excellent, it legitimately made my week a little brighter, and it feels like these stories could go on forever. I’m really gonna miss this one.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode 11 notes below (I moved to the couch for 12 and didn’t take notes, which seems pretty Flying Witch to me).