Alright folks, it’s time once again for the Week in Review! With the season continuing to wind its way down, my own weekly pickings are looking even slimmer than usual. The big news this week is that I simply couldn’t muster any enthusiasm to watch Franxx, and so the butt handles have been dropped until their show gets better at handling its butts. Aside from that, the anime was pretty alright this week, which isn’t a surprise – I’ve honed my seasonal viewing down to just four shows, including a long-running sequel. If I can’t derive any pleasure from that short of a shortlist, I’m probably in real trouble. This has turned out to be a pretty standard off season all around, still housing a few random treasures, but mostly just laying out the carpet for next season’s copious sequels and adaptations and originals. That is, as ever, perfectly fine by me; regardless of what’s currently airing, I’m still buried in Princess Tutu and Chihayafuru and Simoun and plenty of other old gems. Every season is a great anime season if you’re not paralyzed by recency bias – but for now, let’s embrace that recency bias once more, and run down some random thoughts on the industry’s latest wares!

This week’s Laid Back Camp was pretty much textbook Laid Back Camp, a reliable twenty minutes of comfort that made the most it could out of its cast and premise. This episode continued to take advantage of the neat partitioning of the show’s two modes into Rin driving off on a solo adventure while her friends offer advice through text messages. I felt this was a pretty clever way to move Rin and Chiaki closer together relationship-wise – I frankly don’t think those two would really get along, or at least willingly hang out, in regular circumstances, so using text messages to sort of acclimate Rin to Chiaki’s abrasiveness felt like a necessary intermediate step. That plus Chiaki’s handy friendship-solidifying gift of useful navigation made Rin’s ultimate endearment towards Chiaki feel very natural, and on top of that, all that structural relationship-building work was consistently embellished with yet another satisfying trip courtesy of Rin. I don’t think Laid Back Camp is my favorite show of the season, but it’s almost certainly the most consistent.

Meanwhile, the less rock-steady but more occasionally transcendent March comes in like a lion pulled off one of its all-timers this week, concluding Yanagihara’s story on the most beautiful and poignant note possible. I enjoyed Yanagihara’s episode last week, but this one was a marvelous step up in terms of visual invention, offering consistently evocative and ever-shifting interpretations of Yanagihara’s struggles with age and obligation. The rambling, circuitous nature of weekly manga often make for structurally awkward adaptations, but in March’s case, I really appreciate how this story has been given the time to wander through the lives of everyone who’s tangentially touched on Rei’s experience. March simply possesses tremendous empathy for everyone, and the storytelling chops to make all their sympathetic stories real.

And while it couldn’t quite measure up to the overall brilliance of March, this week’s After the Rain was just as quietly devastating in its own way. Akira’s material was certainly sympathetic and well-portrayed here, but it was Kondo’s reunion with his old school friend that was the real killer. While Akira’s material often astonishes through its pure aesthetic beauty, Kondo’s stuff tends to ride on the acuity of its perspective, and how precisely it articulates the various anxieties of aging. That was absolutely true of this segment, which built off convincingly scripted reflections on each of their writing careers to arrive at a beautiful and very well-grounded melancholy that each of them share.

At first it was the specificity of the dialogue that really drew me into this scene; the glum, offhand reflections on Kondo’s separation from his wife, his friend needling him about secret writing, etcetera. Over time, those small reflections built into something more universal, leading both heartening moments like his friend’s “we’re not adults” and devastating ones like Kondo hearing an echo of his former self shouting “the world better be ready for me!” I know it’s very unlikely we’d be getting a show about a character like Kondo if it weren’t also focused on a character like Akira, but I’d desperately love to see more shows that portray these adult insecurities so well.

Finally, A Place Further Than the Universe continued its streak of oddly placed character vignettes this week, this time focusing on Hinata’s mysterious backstory. I’m still not exactly happy about Universe’s choice to load its back half with all these little side stories; the first five or so episodes seemed to promise a more focused coming-of-age narrative, and so the relatively restrained slice of life followup has felt like an unfortunate letdown. That said, Hinata just feels like a more complex and convincing teenager than Yuzuki, and her friendship with Shirase is likely the most compelling relationship in the show altogether, so this still felt like a very fine episode in the abstract. It’s kinda unfortunate for Universe that its initial ambitions are possibly leading me to undervalue what it’s ultimately providing; after all, we rarely get slice of life shows starring characters as realistically sharp-edged as Shirase and Hinata, and episodes like this do a terrific job of bringing their perspectives to life. Universe may not have turned out to be exactly the show I was hoping it would be, but moments like Hinata grinning as she confesses her pettiness to Shirase don’t really need to justify themselves. This show is still a very fine thing.