Hello all, and welcome to the new season’s first Week in Review! I’m still kinda scrambling to catch up on everything (I still haven’t watched Mob Psycho’s latest episodes, since I’m determined to trick my housemates into watching that one), but I’ve definitely got more than enough thoughts for a rambling Week in Review. So far, this season is looking to be an unusually fun one – that is, the proportion of shows I’m watching just because they’re propulsive entertainment, rather than harrowing psychological inquiries or whatnot, is pretty high. I suppose it’s not surprising that a season featuring both TATSUKI and Mizushima’s returns would be a particularly bubbly one, but I’m certainly enjoying it! Between that and the season’s many other contenders, all I’m really lacking at this point is a character drama on the level of After the Rain or whatnot. Fortunately, I’m also complementing this season with imports of Bloom Into You from last season, meaning I’m currently enjoying an extremely balanced diet of excellent anime. Let’s explore the bounty then, as we run down this season’s stars in the Week in Review!

The Promised Neverland’s second episode didn’t address my biggest issue with this adaptation, but went a long way towards building my faith in this property regardless. The plain fact is, this team really should not have gone with the studio they did for their background art, and the results mean Grace Field House will never have that much of a physical presence. Its digitally constructed walls lack any emotional tone whatsoever, and clash harshly with the rest of the production. That said, in terms of the overall storyboarding, it feels like this adaptation is doing the best job it possibly can.

There are many sequences in the Neverland manga that are carried by either stunning full-page layouts or packed groupings of tiny panels, neither of which transfer easily to animation. Thus, instead of going with a rigid panel-by-panel adaptation, director Mamoru Kanbe is wisely opting to focus on adapting the spirit of an exchange. The emphasis on turning corners, the physicality of the long hallway, and the impact of the stairs weren’t really there in manga-Emma’s confrontation with her caretaker – that staging was all anime-original, and worked well to enhance the tension of the moment. This may not be a perfect adaptation, but it feels like the key staff have exactly the attitude they need – great love for the source material, but not such reverence that they’re unwilling to make bold and necessary changes.

Run with the Wind continues to be one of the most rigorously consistent shows I’ve recently come across, with its winter stretch of episodes finally revealing Kakeru’s grand backstory. His feud with his high school team wasn’t really surprising in terms of its content, but it played nicely into this show’s preoccupation with communal versus solo effort. The joy of contributing to a team and being lifted up by those who support you has been central to Run with the Wind from the start, but in Kakeru’s backstory, his high school coach managed to corrupt that philosophy. For the coach, “working for the team” essentially meant sacrificing your own health for the sake of his glory – of course, as Kakeru acknowledges at the end, fighting back against that coach ultimately only satisfied his own personal desires. I also appreciated that Kakeru never really grew past the behavior patterns that haunted him in high school. Kakeru is often ruled by his immediate emotional responses, and instead of “getting over” that, he’s learned how to accept it as a part of himself. On the whole, Run with the Wind executed this reveal with the grace I’ve come to expect from this show, setting us up for a very energetic third act.

Kemurikusa’s second episode was as intriguing and idiosyncratic as the first, in spite of its introduction of a conventional viewpoint character threatening to kill its charm. Wakaba is certainly the weakest element of this production so far – his amnesia makes him feel similar to a wide number of generic protagonists, and Rin slowly discovering that she actually likes him already feels tediously predictable. Fortunately, the worldbuilding and overall narrative progression of this show remain consistently fascinating, in large part because of how little we’re actually told.

Tatsuki seems to understand that the key to filling your story with mysteries to solve is giving it a strong emotional core for the audience to grab onto from the start, and even if Wakaba isn’t really worth caring about, the bond between Rin and her sisters is already giving the show a strong sense of emotional consequence. It’s kinda funny how many properties do this in the opposite, ineffective order – they give us plenty of worldbuilding fluff to “care about,” but leave the actual main characters’ feelings as a mystery or twist. By instead focusing on what’s genuinely important, Kemurikusa is able to suffuse its world with compelling mysteries while still giving us a reason to care. It doesn’t surprise me that the dude who turned a soulless phone game tie-in into an emotionally resonant hit has a bulletproof understanding of dramatic fundamentals, but it’s nice to see it reaffirmed.

Speaking of dramatic fundamentals, The Magnificent Kotobuki pulled off a sturdily executed and entirely predictable second episode, as it quickly ran through a brief “Kyrie has a rivalry with the other hotheaded member of the team” conflict to accompany the Kotobuki squad’s second mission. Kyrie and Chika’s feud here wasn’t exactly bad, but it felt like a fairly paint-by-numbers subplot, with its saving graces being things like these CG models’ very expressive faces, as well as the consistently strong choreography of the battle scenes. I also found this episode’s tendency to shift between CG and traditionally animated characters a little surprising, in part because of how effective it was. Normally the distance in visual integrity between CG and traditionally animated characters is so great that they can’t really share screen time, but the conclusion of this episode’s street brawl segued naturally between each. Details aside, Kotobuki is still more a fun ride than a truly great show, but fun is certainly not a bad thing!

Finally, this week’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure continued what may well be the strongest set of episodes in an already strong season, as Mista and Bucciaratti worked to take out two nefarious Stand-users at once. While the introduction of Bucciaratti’s overall team has had its ups and downs, it’s felt like Golden Wind has been firing on all cylinders ever since it finished its Stand-debuting episodes. Stands are just inherently pretty good – their combination of surreal functionality and tactical flexibility mean they make every fight both more exciting and more ridiculous, and having Bucciaratti’s team all grapple with enemies at once has thus resulted in some of the most exciting/absurd fights of the franchise so far. While Diamond is Unbreakable generally settled into one-on-one fights in spite of its ensemble cast, Golden Wind has embraced the potential of larger fights, with various powers oddly complimenting each other and ratcheting up the tension along the way. If this is what we can expect from the season going forward, Golden Wind is going to be a hell of a ride.