Hold onto your hats folks, it’s time for the Week in Review! It turns out I’m probably not going to be following that many shows this season, but what I’m lacking in range of properties, I’m more than making up in volume of rambling. All of the shows I’m watching gave me plenty to talk about this week, with JoJo pulling off one of its best episodes in months while all three of my newcomers worked to establish their own identities. I’m also appreciated the stark contrast between this season’s two heavyweights – Carole & Tuesday seems determined to embody the strength of a classic story told well, while Sarazanmai embraces creativity for its own sake, and clearly values the power of novelty and surprise. Both of them are great, and with two sturdy action vehicles aside, I’m basically just a slice of life short of a full hand. Let’s break down all the week’s highlights as we run down another week in anime!
This week’s Carole & Tuesday was a beautifully executed journey that, like many second episodes, felt more like a genuine statement of purpose than its premiere. In Carole’s case, it seems this show is pretty content to be a very archetypal “ragtag young heroes strike back against the corporate machine” narrative, feeling oddly reminiscent of last spring’s Megalobox in intent, if not in narrative details. Megalobox’s predictability ultimately made it difficult for me to invest in that show, and there were shades of that issue here, with sequences like the introduction of modern music’s programmer-general feeling so on the nose they became difficult to emotionally engage with.
On the other hand, narrative predictability is never a crime – archetypal stories can be very effective, just so long as the execution is able to humanize the drama. This episode addressed that need with more endearing scenes cataloging Carole and Tuesday’s growing friendship, with the show’s incidental comedy and slice-of-life sequences turning out to be an unexpected highlight. Additionally, the performance climax at the end was genuinely stunning, and the direction and character acting throughout were as vivid as you could hope for. I’d still like to see this show aim for a bit more specificity in the leads’ relationship, as opposed to more generic “quintessential youth” material, but this show has so many strengths that I’m more than happy to watch it grow into itself.
This week’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure felt like the episode all of this season’s art design decisions were waiting for. Golden Wind on the whole has moved away from the lithe, “pretty” character designs of Diamond is Unbreakable, using detailed linework and heavy shadows to create sharp-edged characters that feel naturally grotesque in closeup. In this episode, those closeups were as plentiful as they were gag-inducing, as we were forced to watch Doppio get torn up from the inside by an endless procession of glittering metal daggers. It was JoJo at its most physically uncomfortable, and also a genuine triumph of this season’s format – it seemed clear the staff knew this would be a killer fight, and pulled out all the stops to make sure Metallica was as frightening and grotesque as possible.
It was also a really fun fight in both tactical and character terms. In spite of secretly being an utterly amoral mass murderer, the boss’s alter ego is such a convincingly scrappy fighter that I actually found myself rooting for Doppio to somehow overcome Risotto. And Risotto’s clear menace as one of the truly top assassins felt clear from start to finish – he felt like a completely different level of opponent than your average episodic foe, and having Doppio only triumph through incredibly specific happenstance felt very appropriate without diminishing the boss’s own menace in the slightest. This was Golden Wind at its best.
The third episode of Demon Slayer left me somewhat worried about this story’s ultimate trajectory. While the show’s second episode brought it much closer to the standard Shonen Jump template, it was still able to maintain its own unique identity; in contrast, this episode felt as close to Default Training Segment as possible. Tanjiro’s training with Urokodaki was a trip through some very familiar motions, and it certainly didn’t help that Urokodaki himself doesn’t really have any sort of personality.
Things improved somewhat once his trainers switched to Makomo and Sabito, but even then, his new supporters felt more like simplified character types than true people. I was also disappointed by this sequence’s heavy emphasis on “being a man” as the nature of strength, and the less said about this episode’s simplistic gags, the better. Pretty much the only thing holding this together was its visual execution, which was fortunately good enough to make up for a lot of other weaknesses – both the atmosphere of the forest and the energy of the fights kept things engaging throughout. This wasn’t a backbreaking episode or anything, but it felt like a potential indication that Demon Slayer’s writing just won’t be strong enough to keep me watching.
Sarazanmai’s second episode clarified many of this show’s main variables and overarching structure, while also leaving plenty of mysteries left to reveal. It seems like most episodes will feature their own kappa zombie, and that beautiful sequence of fight and victory animation from the first episode will essentially be this show’s version of a banked transformation sequence. In structural terms, this actually feels like the most rigid and genre-friendly Ikuhara production since Utena.
On the other hand, everything that came before and after that fight sequence did a terrific job of building up Kazuki and Toi as sympathetic, multifaceted protagonists. Kazuki’s sequences with his little brother grounded his goals in clear, tangible feelings, while Toi’s brief scenes with his own brother both offered a sympathetic grounding point and also some hints as to how he arrived at his current state. Following each of those sequences up with “Toi and Kazuki chase a cat while on a fake date” allowed Ikuhara to gleefully indulge in his consistently strong comedy, and the episode as a whole served as a neat illustration of the contradiction inherent in its premise.
“I want to connect, but I want to take” was most directly emphasized through the reveal that Kazuki stole his cat, which felt like an acknowledgment that in order to exert our will on the world or even connect with others, we must necessarily contradict the desires of others, provoking friction and resentment even through our efforts to grow closer. We’re still too early to see exactly where Ikuhara is going with all this, but between the Amazon boxes, the focus on social media performance, and this episode’s emphasis on giving and taking, there’s a clear thread on the transactional nature of modern connection that I’m very excited to follow.
