Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Week in Review. With Legend of the Galactic Heroes taking the week off, my week in anime lost twenty-five percent of its volume, but worked hard to make up for in quality what it lacked in quantity. This week’s My Hero Academia was mostly just “solid original material (plus one highlight), adapted competently,” but both Hinamatsuri and Megalo Box knocked it out of the park, demonstrating both their consistent strengths and a variety of new tricks. Those two make for a pretty weird combination, but between them they cover an oddly exhaustive range of the stuff I look for in anime – stylish action, tactically-minded sports narratives, warm comedy, charming character pieces, etc. I’m basically just missing “auteur-directed,” “strong romance,” “themey-wemey show,” and “psychological drama” on my bingo sheet, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes is generally happy to hold down the theme fort. The anime is good and even these three shows have offered me plenty to talk about, so let’s get right down to another week in review!

Hinamatsuri kicked all kinds of ass again this week, offering an episode that was both consistently hilarious and also a very satisfying payoff for Hina and Nitta’s strange relationship. Hina has faded into the background a bit over the course of the show, but this episode let her really shine, and demonstrate how much she genuinely has grown over these episodes. There’s an utterly unreasonable amount of comic energy caught up in Hina’s every mild expression and delayed half-utterance, and when you coupled that with the fundamentally endearing nature of her desire to stay with Nitta, you end up with scenes where Hina slowly spinning in the air is as hilarious as it is heartwarming. And outside of the family-focused material, this show’s new addition to the cast, the psychic enthusiast, turned out to be a terrific foil for Hina’s “well, I’ll do it if I have to” ambivalence. Hina’s entire personality is essentially an ode to the power of deadpan comedy, and I friggin’ love deadpan comedy, so this was definitely an episode for me.

This week’s Megalo Box managed to turn an episode with no fighting at all into one of my easy favorites in the show so far. While Megalo Box’s visual execution has felt pretty steady throughout, it feels like its storytelling has actually improved episode by episode, culminating in this three-way conflict between Team Nowhere and the two golden siblings that actually feels satisfying on all sides. It was great seeing Nanba essentially take the lead this week, and do everything within his power to snatch back that match with Yurio, and it was equally great seeing Joe pretty much accidentally succeed in the only way he could: by making a big public spectacle of himself and playing into the naturally showy nature of this tournament.

I’ve complained in the past that Megalo Box hasn’t really felt like a specific story, but these last few episodes have gone a long, long way to infusing both these characters and this narrative with a uniqueness that gives me something to emotionally hold onto. And on top of that, the show’s still gorgeous throughout; I particularly loved how this week heavily favored evocative open compositions, which helped to sell its melancholy mood while still maintaining an iconic dramatic scale. Megalo Box is just a real damn good show.

Meanwhile, My Hero Academia essentially bridged the gap between the end of the training arc and the Bakugo rescue operation this week, while coincidentally adapting what might be my favorite scene of the story so far. Iida punching Midoriya is such a thoroughly earned expression of all of Iida’s compassion and frustration that I couldn’t help but cheer both in manga and animation, as Iida finally shakes his classmates and reminds them just how selfish they’re being. Iida clearly cares just as much about his classmates as the rest of them, but he’s forced to play the “bad guy” here purely because he’s able to temper that concern with an understanding of his own limitations and the greater forces at work. While Midoriya seems content to forever believe that if his body moves, he’s in the right, Iida grapples with far more moral complexity, and in this episode clearly demonstrated he has the temperament necessary to be a true hero.

It’s a testament to My Hero Academia’s character writing that Iida’s actions feel like such a payoff here, and I even liked how the fact that Midoriya wasn’t actually convinced directly reflected on how All Might hasn’t actually been an entirely good influence on him. All Might’s strength and conviction have made him a symbol for everyone, but following All Might’s example too closely has left Midoriya a tattered wreck. It’s a good thing he has friends like Iida around to try and talk some sense into him, whether or not they succeed.