Holy crap, it’s time for the Week in Review. Having just finished working on the preview guide this past weekend, I had to hustle to catch up on what I wanted for today, and still haven’t really gotten the chance to expand beyond my four must-see properties. Fortunately, those must-see properties are offering more than enough entertainment to sustain me, between the reliably ridiculous action of Thunderbolt/JoJo and the newfound pleasures of Run with the Wind and Gridman. Gridman in particular is really stunning me so far; the show is building on styles of characterization and shot composition that echo some of my all-time favorite anime, while effortlessly carving out its own identity all the while. Even with relatively limited overall animation, Gridman is able to sell its world at all times through its gorgeous scene setting and purposeful, highly active direction. Let’s dispense with the preamble, then, and get right to this week in anime!

Run with the Wind’s second episode wasn’t quite the aesthetic match of its predecessor, but it still demonstrated basically all the qualities that made that premiere so enchanting. Wind’s preeminent strength might just be how well it captures the lived experience of life at a cruddy college dorm; I felt immediately transported back to my senior year off campus by this episode’s rambling collection of anecdotes. That’s not some intangible quality Wind possesses, though – it’s the direct result of the show’s detailed interior layouts, relatively naturalistic dialogue, and emphasis on both mundane chores and constant impromptu meetings in a cramped communal space. The show’s also quite funny, and smartly used farcical exaggeration here to power us through Haiji’s unrealistically manipulative recruitment efforts. Wind hasn’t truly grabbed me in an emotional sense yet, but it’s conveying its humble character drama with plenty of flare so far.

Thunderbolt Fantasy’s second and third episodes still haven’t quite lived up to the standard set by the first season, but have nonetheless been highly entertaining in their own ways. The show’s biggest issue right now is that it’s still essentially setting up its overarching conflict, and thus the narrative feels both unfocused and overly consumed with exposition. We’ve got a fair number of characters now, but beyond “everybody is chasing Shang, who’s chasing the Princess of Cruelty, who’s also chasing him,” there’s not really one clear, gripping conflict like “we must scale the Bones of Creation.” Additionally, the characters are currently a little too scattered to really bounce off each other, meaning we get less of the consistently witty repartee of the first season. That said, Thunderbolt’s fights are still a lot of fun, I’m enjoying the new additions to the cast, and the show is still peppered with wonderfully bombastic one-liners. Plus, the third episode’s final moments essentially already answered one of my key complaints: Shang and the Enigmatic Gale are back together at last. Time for our grumpy adventurer reunion tour!

I can’t entirely say whether it was a genuine improvement or just lowered expectations, but I actually had an altogether great time with Golden Wind’s second episode. Part of my enjoyment definitely came down to this episode’s excellent flashback overview of Giornio’s life, which presented him as both a more emotionally complex person and also someone with a more sympathetic motivation than nearly every prior JoJo. Giorno being almost accidentally raised by an Italian gangster settled all the pieces of his prior behavior into place, and resulted in a character who felt both sympathetically vulnerable and also convincingly tethered to Naples specifically, echoing the emotional strength of Morioh as a location.

Of course, it also helped that Giornio’s battle with Bucciarati was classic JoJo through and through, making wonderfully creative use of two of the most complex and flexible Stands yet. Basically everything about this episode felt like a culmination of all of JoJo’s strengths so far in a narrative sense, benefiting from the improved character writing of Diamond is Unbreakable while hearkening back to Phantom Blood through moments like Giornio’s Speedwagon-esque “I didn’t kill you because I realized you too are a gentleman.” I’m still not sold on Golden Wind’s linework-heavy aesthetic (and felt the CG-heavy face-shifting punch at this episode’s midpoint was a total mess), but if the writing stays this good, that probably won’t matter.

I was beyond happy to see SSSS.Gridman follow up its phenomenal first episode with perhaps an even better follow-up, demonstrating all of its key aesthetic strengths while also introducing new characters who felt engaging right from the start. Obviously Gridman is heavily indebted to its classic tokusatsu influences, but the atmosphere of the shots in and around school felt the most nostalgic for me, with idle conversations between classes and random arguments about juice echoing shows like Evangelion both in narrative content and in aesthetic tone. Gridman’s layouts just blow basically every other show this season out of the water, elevating all of its quietly tense scenes through gorgeous, evocative scene-setting that consistently enhance its various tones.

There is a tonal language of adolescent alienation that Studio Gainax developed consistently across its 90s/00s projects, and though Akira Amemiya only contributed fragments of key animation and whatnot to those shows, they exhibit a profound and very welcome influence on Gridman’s aesthetic. And beyond the show’s consistently stunning aesthetic strengths, this episode’s formal introductions of Samurai Calibur and Akane added welcome jolts of alternating levity and menace. I’m still not really sure what Gridman will actually be about, but opening with a villain who’s basically a 4chan troll treating everyone else as NPCs is a pretty good way to start.