There is nothing truly new to report about this week’s anime as a whole, and I’m already two hours late on posting this article anyway, so we’re jumping right into it, folks. Demon Slayer was solid, JoJo was ridiculous, Sarazanmai was repetitive, Carole & Tuesday was transcendent – I think that’s about it for preamble? Yeah, I think we’re basically covered. Starting off with Tanjiro and Nezuko’s shonen shenanigans, let’s run down one more week in anime!
Demon Slayer didn’t break the mold in any way this week, but at this point I’ve realized it just doesn’t really need to. When I see my pile of shows to catch up on every Sunday morning, Demon Slayer has become the one I always reach for first. It’s not the best show I’m watching, but it’s definitely the most immediately enjoyable – it’s successfully arrived at that heralded Shonen Jump spot, where each episode is like another chip and this is your last handful, you swear.
In this episode’s case, there was fun to be found both in the full introduction of demonic Michael Jackson, as well some neat visual tricks and plenty of charming gags. Demon Slayer’s comedy has been more miss than hit so far, but Tanjiro being super defensive of Nezuko’s looks was a great bit that successfully mined this show’s most fertile dramatic vein, the weirdly adorable bond between these two siblings. The incidental visual gags of Nezuko flopping around Tamayo’s living room were also very cute, and between Tamayo’s aroma and the tracking ability of their new enemies, the show continues to find clever ways to take advantage of Ufotable’s CG specialties. With the training arc now long behind us, Demon Slayer is at last able to both take advantage of its sibling hook and also reveal the unique features of its own world. Demon Slayer is finally on solid ground.
This week’s Sarazanmai was largely a return to the show’s usual formula, with last episode’s half-season finale theoretically having resolved Kazuki’s central arc. I say theoretically because it seems like a minor theme of this show is the fact that both events and people don’t ever reach clean resolutions, and often end up cyclically feeding into the oppression they once suffered under – something this episode seemed to be pointing towards with Reo and Mabu, and something which has cropped up in every single Ikuhara work to a great or lesser extent. And that, in turn, points to one of my greatest issues with this show.
While Sarazanmai’s kappa-otter feud is fun for gags, I feel like it’s never done anything but obscure the show’s thematic intentions, and center us on conflicts that are pretty much impossible to emotionally invest in. Meanwhile, whenever the show decides to actually clarify something, the takeaway is something Ikuhara has already articulated at length and with greater poignancy in one of his other works. Between the emotionally inert kappa/otter gimmicks, the tedious in-show repetition of bank footage, and the fact that this show still hasn’t really said anything that Ikuhara hasn’t said better elsewhere, Sarazanmai still mostly just feels like work to sit through. I’m still planning to finish it, but this one definitely doesn’t live up to the director’s highlights.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure offered an episode that was pretty much straight-down-the-middle, utterly-unfiltered JoJo goodness. The strength of this episode almost entirely came down to the strength of Ciocollata as a villain, who elevated himself over the default JoJo antagonists through a terrific mixture of tactical trickery and bombastic grandstanding. JoJo is pretty much always wobbling on the line dividing “that’s clever” and “that’s fucking stupid,” and Ciocollata’s body separation trick landed firmly on the clever end, as it felt like a natural combination of his backstory and his Stand powers. Couple that neat tactical flourish with his deliciously over-the-top speech on the times when humans are truly blessed, and you end up with a villain and battle that stand among Golden Wind’s best adventures. Each JoJo season has its own signature strengths, but it’s bread-and-butter JoJo episodes like this that define the show’s lasting appeal.
And unsurprisingly, Carole & Tuesday maintained its usual grace and charm through an episode that lacked a dedicated musical performance from our leads, but made up for it with plenty of absurd “Mars Brightness” auditions. Even the episodes of Carole & Tuesday which don’t advance the main narrative are generally given a strong structure and inherent appeal through some fun musicianship-adjacent concept, and “trying out for American Idol” proved to be an extremely fertile gimmick. This episode was stuffed with fun, playful incidental moments, like the woman who auditioned with the awful dubstep screeching her mother used to sing to her, or the surprise reappearance of “Round & Laundry”’s third collaborator. But more importantly, this episode also directly addressed a concern that’s always been lurking in the show’s periphery – the profound difference in backgrounds between our two leads, and the lurking threat of Tuesday’s family coming back to retrieve her.
Carole & Tuesday’s generally lighthearted tone has at times made it feel like Tuesday is just enjoying an extended vacation from real life, and this week, realizing she might at last be noticed by her mother made her further realize how lightly she’d actually been taking this journey. Tuesday’s sense of shame at this realization was executed with grace, leading to another convincingly earnest heart-to-heart between our leads and the charming payoff of their signature handshake. Carole & Tuesday can at times be so snappy and polished in its execution that you could perhaps accuse it of being impersonal or insincere, but the show’s thoughtful approach to personal conflicts like this means it can succeed even as an outright character drama. Carole & Tuesday is way too powerful.
