All of our new shows have turned in their final assignments, and the testing period is over. Who will rise, who will fall, who will entertain us mightily for a few weeks only to slowly sink into a mire of mediocrity and disappointment – all these questions lie ahead, but for now, we can already viciously judge the labor of thousands of animators based on our first impressions of their new creations. I knew from before this season even began that it would be a relatively light one, but with that in mind, the haul here is actually pretty solid. We had a couple truly great premieres, a few more shows that demonstrate either potential or reasonable genre chops, and The Rest. There’s always going to be a The Rest, but as long as anime continues to produce just a couple shows that justify our nostalgic Stockholm Syndrome every season, this unhealthy relationship can keep chugging merrily along. Let’s start right at the top of the list and RUN ‘EM DOWN!
Yearly Archives: 2016
Winter 2016 – First Impressions, Part Two
The week keeps chugging along, and mediocre shows keep piling up one by one. It seems this really will be a light season, but I don’t really need that many airing shows to feel content, and it’s looking like we’ll just about manage that. To accompany ERASED’s excellent premiere, Showa Genroku Rakujo Shinji turns in perhaps my favorite first episode so far, and BBK/BRNK pulls off a classic action-adventure opening strong enough to almost make up for its hideous, soul-breaking CG characters. I’m guessing we’ll only get one or two more watchable shows out of the remaining picks, but if that just means more time for Hyouka, I’m perfectly okay with that. Anime may be mostly bad, but “mostly bad” spread out across several decades of releases means we’ve still got plenty of backlog to get through.
You can check out the overall list of shows over at ANN, or scroll on down for my new scores and links to individual reviews. Anime ho!
Hyouka – Episode 10
Hyouka’s tenth episode opens with one more of those classic sequences where the framing tells two-thirds of the story, in a way you can viscerally feel even if you’re not looking out for it. The intent is to put you in a character’s headspace – Oreki’s, as usual. But this sequence isn’t designed to visually evoke his intimacy with Chitanda, or discomfort embracing the rose-colored life he consistently approaches. This sequence is about establishing How Freaking Scary Irisu Fuyumi Is.
We open with long shots down a well-to-do neighborhood and across a lengthy teahouse, shots that serve a duel purpose here. First, they establish this place as intimidating purely through its class and wealth; second, they create an initial assumption of open space, one that is swiftly countered as we switch to Oreki and Irisu. Our first shots of their meeting focus on Oreki’s intimate, uncomfortable body language, and then we see the small room they actually inhabit. Oreki is visually and emotionally cornered here by a much stronger predator, one who, unlike Chitanda, seems perfectly comfortable using her wealth as an extension of her own power. Extremely brief shots of Irisu from straight-on seem to imply that Oreki has difficulty making eye contact, and closeups emphasize how imposing her presence is. It is only when Oreki is able to establish his issues with each of the three detective theories that some semblance of equality is established.
Winter 2016 – First Impressions, Part One
A new season has begun, and I’m already well into the friggin’ preview guide. I mentioned back in my initial season preview that this looked to be a particularly dire season, and the shows so far have unfortunately born that out even more emphatically than I’d assumed. That list of shows only had eight new entries in the first place, and of those eight, two have turned out strong so far, three have disappointed me, one hasn’t been picked up for streaming yet, and one likely isn’t even airing this season. It’s a hard time for all of us, but as long as backlogs exist, I should be the only person who actually has to suffer. There have been a couple strong premieres so far, and there’s always the chance one of the season’s wildcards will impress, so there’s no reason to give up hope yet. Let’s keep the anime faith alive!
You can check out the full list of shows covered so far over at ANN, or check below for my list of scores and links to individual reviews. LET’S GET TO IT.
One Punch Man – Review
Aw dang, I reviewed the season/year’s big breakout hit. My review turned out roughly how you’d expect if you’ve been reading my weekly thoughts – I felt the show certainly had beautiful animation, occasionally had interesting moments outside of that, and was mostly just a kinda mediocre gag comedy/action thing. I guess it’s become traditional at this point for me to have lukewarm feelings on the year’s big action hit, from Attack on Titan through Kill la Kill up to One Punch Man, and I think that makes sense. Action shows care about action, and I personally think pretty much any show is lesser if it doesn’t provide you with characters or ideas worth caring about – but the sorts of scenes that result in those things aren’t necessarily the kind of scenes people who like action for its own sake want to see in their shows. Pure action shows will continue to come out and electrify the western fanbase, and I will continue to find them kinda mediocre. So it goes.
You can check out my full review at ANN, or… wait, nevermind, I don’t have any notes. So go over there!
The Star Under Lights: Millennium Actress
Millennium Actress’s credits open with the view from a train, as light flickers past in a tunnel before giving way to city skyline. It’s fitting that an animated movie about the deception of film begins with those flickering lights; the light of a train on a tunnel is itself one of the simplest forms of animation, a series of starkly lit shots creating the appearance of motion. As the view transitions to a bombed city under blue skies, the image shifts, with a plane overhead melting into first a modern passenger jet, and then a rocket in space. Fluid transitions across time and space are an accepted part of reality in this world; what matters is not the base nature of the world, but the dramatic throughline of the object in flight. What catches the eye is what remains. What we remember is what exists.
Hyouka – Episode 9
Hyouka’s eighth episode pulled all sorts of meta visual tricks, using the context of an in-show movie in order to play with character acting and shot framing in a variety of interesting ways. Through its awkward direction and oddly remarkable animation, it pulled off techniques anime normally doesn’t use for very good reasons, in order to make intentionally bad staging decisions. The episode’s middle act was essentially a self-aware interrogation of the nature of visual storytelling; and so it seems only appropriate that the following episode is entirely focused on narrative storytelling, and how our relationship with a theoretical author dictates everything stories could possibly mean.