With a massive backlog behind me and a whole bunch of reader-funded projects and various other freelance works ahead of me, it’s been hard to find time to watch anime for my own enjoyment this week. I wasn’t actually able to get to O maidens in time for this Week in Review, but fortunately, I had more than enough thoughts on this week’s other productions to make up for it. I’m actually watching a lot less seasonal anime than I used to, but the thoughts I’m producing on those shows are both lengthier and better-informed, so that’s an okay tradeoff, right? WATCHING ANIME IS HARD, OKAY.
Alright, enough excuses. Let’s break down what I actually did watch in one more Week in Review!
Carole & Tuesday’s latest episode seemed to mark a clear turning point in the narrative, as our recent episodic capers were substituted for a series of minor board-rearranging sequences seemingly intended to set up the show’s endgame. In light of that, it was a less inherently entertaining than most recent episodes, but almost necessarily so, and I felt it did a fine job of laying the groundwork for what’s shaping up to be a very exciting final act. I’m beginning to appreciate the iconic simplicity implied by Carole & Tuesday’s consistently first-name-only characters – not knowing people like Kyle or Tai’s last names means they more easily embody roles like “the reporter” or “the engineer,” which fits for a story that’s painting in such broad dramatic strokes, and attempting to tell pretty much the most classic music-related story there is
These characters don’t sink into their archetypes, though; Kyle felt complex and alive during his conversations with Tuesday, and Tai teaming up with Ertegun has been a great turn for both of them. I appreciated that Tuesday wasn’t actually “betrayed” by Kyle (only by her own adolescent expectations), and can’t wait to see what Angela and her two bickering accomplices come up with. Wherever this show ends, I’m very happy to enjoy the ride.
Given pulled off likely its best episode ever this week, a series of somehow gentle-yet-thundering conversations which drew all of this show’s many interpersonal conflicts several steps forward. The uniting factor of these conversations was Kaji’s attempts to salvage their band, as Mafuyu and Ritsuka both wrestled with feelings far too large and imposing for them to handle alone.
Kaji’s conversation with Ritsuka, where he led his young bandmate towards realizing his feelings for Mafuyu in the gentlest way possible, was a goddamn triumph, and one of the most frank discussions of coming to terms with your sexuality I’ve seen in any anime, ever. Kaji was incredibly supportive in every way he could be, from his gentle broaching of the subject, to his consistent insistence on the normalcy of this situation, to his attempts to mitigate Ritsuka’s feelings of “otherness” by sharing similar experiences from his own life. And that scene was just one highlight in an episode absolutely brimming with such conversations, along with more highlights like Kaji’s brutal description of first love. I’m not sure if people are still sleeping on this one, but Given seems quietly on track to be the best character drama of the year.
Once again, Granbelm followed up one of its major action spectacles with a much quieter episode, as the contestants and their allies convened and strategized out in the real world. This show’s character drama has always felt a bit lopsided to me – Shingetsu and Mangetsu seem to always get one or two conversations that feel brutally specific, piercing, and heartfelt, while the other characters basically just stew in their consistent motivational conflicts. That was true of this episode as well, with the added issue of Nene-nee’s techno-magical investigations working as a consistent dramatic drag.
Both Anna’s disappearance and Nene’s explorations of the true nature of Granbelm felt like they were relying on worldbuilding rules that have been vaguely defined from the start, and felt tedious pretty much the moment they were introduced. The system of magic in this world is basically all “rule of cool” handwaving, coupled with “my emotional breakthrough has made me stronger” character-based drama. Given that, why should I care at all about Nene’s investigations regarding the nitty-gritty technical nature of magic? Hanging drama on the precise physical mechanics of magic felt like a fundamental misunderstanding of this show’s storytelling, and made for one of the show’s weakest episodes on the whole. But hey, at least the Shingetsu/Mangetsu stuff is still great!
