Alright folks, it’s time for one more Week in Review. We’re actually reaching the late stages of the season now, though it doesn’t really feel like that. Stars Align is the only show I’m watching that’s formally concluding at the end of this season, and yet Stars Align also feels like it could go on forever – its team has only participated in one actual match so far, and all of its characters still have stories to tell. Meanwhile, My Hero Academia’s third season has only just finished clearing its throat, while Vinland Saga and Legend of the Galactic Heroes continue with the stately confidence of adaptations that know they’ll be sticking around for a while. I actually fell behind on LoGH this week, but I’ll hopefully be making up for that blurb’s absence with the sheer volume of writing I’ve assembled for this week’s other episodes. Let’s get to it!
Stars Align absolutely swung for the fences this week, in an episode that followed up on the show’s recent sports theatrics by demonstrating it’s equally strong as a character drama. The centerpiece of this episode was clearly Yu’s extended conversation with Maki, where they acknowledged their deep uncertainty regarding their gender identity, and were assured by Maki’s unconditionally sympathetic perspective.
On a more meta, “holy shit we’re going there” level, this episode absolutely matched last season’s Given in its empathy and thoughtfulness regarding LGBT identity, and managed to turn an often mean-spirited trope (“let’s disguise ourselves as the opposite gender”) into a gateway for a frank discussion of how limiting and destructive our cultural assumptions regarding gender can be. And on an in-show level, this conversation was one of the show’s strongest illustrations yet of its fundamental focus on finding social support structures wherever you can, and the importance of reaching out and putting yourself in another’s shoes.
Almost all of Stars Align’s characters act “like jerks” at various points, because they’re human beings – they are not single static personalities, they are masses of contradictory feelings, and sometimes don’t embody their greatest, kindest selves. It’s easy to be sympathetic towards people who are always kind; Stars Align instead asks more of us, that we understand none of us are always our best selves, and to understand and forgive in spite of that.
That focus on the necessity of support structures was paid off by this episode’s charming final scenes, which simultaneously resolved Mitsue’s subtly drawn character arc. Seeing her admit her passion for drawing to their club adviser recontextualized her behavior all season long; having been burned by her parents for genuinely investing in drawing, she’d instead decided that caring and trying at all are stupid, since you’re bound to be disappointed. But spending time alongside Maki’s team gave her the hope to pursue her passions once more; with the strength of a loving support network behind her, she was able to find genuine pride in her art. Mitsue’s story felt totally convincing as a personal journey, and also a ringing endorsement of this show’s thematic heart. Fine character dramas are a pretty great thing!
After over half a damn season of preamble, My Hero Academia at last commenced its grand third season operation this week, even if its heroes only got as far as the bad guys’ front door. It’s been a strange experience waiting through this material week after week, and has for me once again emphasized the very different strengths of anime and manga as mediums.
Anime just plain cannot handle the volume of exposition presented by this arc’s opening stretch; it might try and present these conversations as tense and fast-paced, but their ultimate result is still just relaying large volumes of static information to the audience. In a written medium, you can get away with a volume of exposition like this for several reasons – not only does it take far less time to read text than hear it spoken, but you can also just plain skip the material you’re not interested in, without it having a particularly negative effect on your reading experience.
However, much like how a manga’s bad comedy gags suddenly feel much more obnoxious when they’re spending full minutes filling the whole monitor screen, piles of quasi-necessary information become a much bigger dramatic hurdle when they all have to be recited in full. From its start until now, this third season’s first act has felt more like a cautionary tale about adaptation than a genuinely compelling drama.
And finally, Vinland Saga saw Canute at last challenging his father face to face, a confrontation that simultaneously felt long in coming and strangely abrupt. The awkward fact of the matter is that, in character writing terms, Canute is currently more of a device than a person – he was once an understandably cowardly young prince, but then he saw a vision, and now he is essentially the mortal avatar of Vinland Saga’s most far-seeing characters’ collective mortal paradise. Because of this, while I could appreciate his challenge to his father as a philosophical war of ideals, it was difficult to invest in emotionally.
That war of ideals was pretty interesting, though! Even if his route there was unbelievable, Canute’s current perspective is undeniably sympathetic, and his disdain for god seems perfectly in line with both Vinland’s other heroes, and Yukimura’s more general thoughts on society. The false promises of Vinland Saga’s gods, where we are promised glory in death for our mortal suffering, are essentially equivalent to the false promises of Planetes’ signature god: capitalism. We are lulled into slavery through the promise of ultimate glory, and ultimately, even our supposed kings can come to see themselves as simply components of an inevitable engine. Of course, kings thinking of themselves as servants of the crown is simply another way of justifying their actions – just as Planetes’ Werner Locksmith justified his brutality by framing himself as an agent of progress, so does Canute’s father see himself as a slave to the crown.
I could ramble about the parallels between these stories’ themes and characters for hours, which is often Vinland Saga’s saving grace. Even when its narrative wanders or character writing feels shaky, it still gives me a whole lot to think about!
