Another week of anime has come and gone, drawing us ever closer to the end of this altogether lukewarm season. I can’t really say I’ll be missing this one, as half of my airing schedule are actually long-running shows that just so happened to cross this season (LoGH and MHA), while the other half hasn’t really been memorable enough to stick with me. This week was an unfortunate low ebb for most of what I’m watching, as My Hero Academia kinda stumbled in conveying a key manga moment, while Megalo Box couldn’t quite find enough emotional substance in its requisite “the band is breaking up” conflict. Meanwhile, Hinamatsuri seems to be running out of gas for a few of its running jokes, while Legend of the Galactic Heroes… well actually, Legend of the Galactic Heroes is pretty much always great. Let’s start with that then, and open with some positive thoughts about cynical themes as we run this week down!

We were introduced to a real shithead in this week’s Legend of the Galactic Heroes, as Commodore Falk arrived to basically embody the last two decades of American imperialism. Not that Legend of the Galactic Heroes was ever intended to apply specifically to America, but Falk’s bluster and insincere insinuations and “we’ll be greeted as liberators” summed up a great deal of what us Americans have been paying the consequences for over here, even before we got to Wang’s reflections on how politicians pay for elections in blood. And of course, the punchline to that Wang conversation felt achingly relevant as well: “we can’t rebel against these orders, these people were democratically elected.” I am consistently thrilled to see Galactic Heroes avoid pointing to any specific person as the “villain” responsible for all its societies’ woes. The plain fact is, the average person just isn’t that great – not that high-minded, only deeply sympathetic towards people they feel some tribal kinship with, generally parsing politics in a sort of “my team versus the other team” emotional daze. We don’t need untouchable cackling emperors to destroy our lives; we’re not smart or kind enough to avoid doing it to ourselves.

This week’s Hinamatsuri was a very simple one, offering two sequences centered on Hitomi and Anzu that each struck at the core of their own characters’ material. Hitomi’s parade of unfortunate decisions felt fairly underwhelming this week, but her material has always felt like this show’s weakest branch. In contrast with the emotional substance and personal growth that adds both dramatic weight and diversity to Hina and Anzu’s stories, Hitomi never really learns from her experiences, and her situation never changes; it’s always “Hitomi can’t say no,” followed by some improbable unfortunate turn and maybe one of those tongue-out faces the show likes so much. The show ran out of new places to take that a good number of episodes ago, and new Hitomi segments just kinda feel like dead air at this point.

The Anzu half was more endearing, though still far from the show’s best material. I think my favorite thing about that half was the plain fact that Hinamatsuri managed to direct itself towards a conflict where Anzu was forced to think “do I love my family enough to kill this horse.” That’s just marvelous madness in its own right, and a moment that went a long way towards saving this otherwise mediocre episode.

Megalo Box ran through the show’s requisite “the heroes are at their lowest point and the team verges on dissolution” episode, which, I mean, whatever. While individual episodes have managed to sell their associated character drama, Megalo Box as a whole still hasn’t really humanized Joe, Nanbu, and Sachio beyond their general archetypes, and so an episode focused on them stewing in their feelings really only highlights how superficial their relationships actually are. The show attempt to circle that square by echoing lines like “I can promise you’ve got real skill” from the first episode, and I thought the choice to drop off Sachio with Shirato was pretty inspired, but Megalo Box is ultimately at its weakest when it’s going through seemingly genre-mandated motions like these ones, which demand a show more interested in thematics or character psychology to really feel like anything more than a narrative obligation. On the other hand, this episode also managed to fit in the entire battle between Yuri and his first-round opponent, so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much. Megalo Box is clearly aware of its own strengths, and rarely wastes too much time wallowing in its weaknesses. With the preamble concluded, I’m ready to see Joe beat the shit out Burroughs!

My Hero Academia disappointed me again this week, and once again it had nothing to do with the actual material being adapted. The big narrative “event” of this week’s episode was Midoriya and the team’s rescue of Bakugo, but it felt like the show fundamentally misunderstood what made that rescue so impactful. The formulating of Midoriya’s plan, and the execution of him and his classmates dashing in for Bakugo, was accompanied by a tension-destroying monologue, and given very little visual embellishment; in contrast, Bakugo blasting himself up to them got all the roaring horns, dramatic impact frames, and bountiful animation I expect from Academia’s big moments. But “Bakugo explodes himself really far” clearly wasn’t the point here – the point, or points, were that Midoriya is learning to temper his self-destructive instincts with caution and concern for his friends, while Bakugo is learning to value his friends in general.

By placing the emphasis on Bakugo being awesome, the show undercut both these points – instead, the rescue’s planning goes by in a moment, and the visual focus made it feel like Bakugo mostly just rescued himself. It feels almost like the anime’s take on this rescue was planned around that sweet Bakugo cut, which felt like a mistake to me. Still, next episode is certain to be a stunner – this is the Big Fight, after all, and given we haven’t had a stupidly well-animated episode since Muscular, I’m guessing we’re just about due.