After twenty-four long episodes of painstakingly restoring the prince’s heart, and a cruel turn where the raven’s poison saw Mytho transforming into some kind of hateful, raven-crossed beast, it is ultimately not Ahiru’s efforts that see Mytho freed and restored. Instead, on the cusp of submitting to the raven entirely, it is Rue’s honest expression of love that frees him. Though Rue was told merely to trick Mytho, her feelings of obligation eventually shifted to affection, and ultimately honest love. Even our lies can contain partial truths, and a lie which is believed can change us until it becomes truth, for better or for worse. Rue’s curse is of the same kind that has tormented Mytho, the same lie that has hung grimly over all our characters, fostered by their creators – the lies we also know as “fiction.”
Yearly Archives: 2019
Summer 2019 – Week 3 in Review
The summer season continued its unrelenting barrage of excellence this week, offering far too many good shows for me to keep up with them all. Seriously, I’m not kidding – I’m totally behind on like half the things I’m watching, and should almost certainly have dropped something last week for my own sanity’s sake. Fortunately, it seems like Dr. Stone is already sort of losing its momentum, or at least proving it’s a series better appreciated in manga form – but aside from that, what summer contenders I’ve kept up with remain strong, and I’ve still gotta catch back up with Astra and O Maidens. Let’s break down what I have managed to get to in one more Week in Review!
Why It Works: So You Just Finished Neon Genesis Evangelion. What’s Next?
This week on Why It Works, I run through a wide array of recommendations for all those brave souls who’ve just finished their first watch of Neon Genesis Evangelion. There are plenty of shows that directly echo the narrative tropes or iconography of Evangelion, but capturing its underlying appeal is a lot trickier, and I felt I did a fair enough job of offering selections for a variety of Evangelion’s strengths. March comes in like a lion feels like a weirdly appropriate spiritual successor to Evangelion, while other choices like Flip Flappers are more obvious, but still well-worth watching. Anyway, here’s the piece!
So You Just Finished Neon Genesis Evangelion. What’s Next?
Flowers – Le volume sur printemps (Part One)
There’s something about visual novels that always seems to return me to younger days, and my own high school and high school-adjacent experiences. Of course, I never actually had a high school experience like the one perpetually portrayed in anime and visual novels – I never sat in that back right window seat, and I never developed the passionate, tangled web of romantic longing that seems to define Anime Youth. But the thing is, I actually was in high school at the same time I was watching through many of these properties, and my own memories are thus tethered not just to my physical experiences, but to the aesthetics that informed my view of what high school life is “supposed to be like.”
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s – Episode 9
Hell yeah folks, it’s time for more Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha! The show’s second season is moving towards its third act at this point, with recent episodes having clarified the stakes of our drama in ever more pressing terms. As last episode’s Hayate-side drama revealed, Hayate’s body is being continuously stressed by the Book of Darkness, and she’s at this point got perhaps a month to live. And as its Nanoha-side drama revealed, completing the book won’t actually save her – the book has been programmed to devour its master until they’re nothing, either through consuming them in lieu of receiving new pages, or turning them into some kind of magical bomb if its pages are filled.
That second reveal will likely come as a great surprise to Hayate’s family, who’re clearly operating under the presumption that finishing the book will save their master. Vita at least seems on the verge of remembering their book’s true nature, but it seems clear that they’ve been programmed to consistently forget its current state, leading to a life defined by cyclical tragedy. Seeing Hayate and her family care for each other has been one of the greatest strengths of A’s, making the knowledge that they’re actually killing her feel like a loaded gun waiting to go off. Whether we’re about to witness that bomb drop, learn more about the masked man, or simply share time with Fate and Hayate as they recuperate, I’m ready for whatever awaits us in A’s ninth episode!
Girls’ Last Tour – Episode 5
Alright folks, settle in, settle in. This may be the post-apocalypse, but that’s no reason to be impolite. Today we’ll be returning to the altogether excellent Girls’ Last Tour, whose last two episodes have gone well and above the standard set by the show’s introduction. Girls’ Last Tour has been an enchantingly atmospheric and poignantly personal story from the beginning, but the show’s last two episodes both dove into heavy and complex themes with remarkable grace.
In the show’s third episode, the introduction of fellow traveler Kanazawa served as an opportunity to explore the things that drive us to keep living, and the importance of some sense of purpose. In a world like Yuu and Chi’s, you can’t simply drift through life in a comfortable neutral – every day is a struggle to maintain the necessities of life, and thus every day is a fresh question as to why you struggle at all. Kanazawa’s hope lay in the map he was building, but when that map was lost, he was forced to reconsider his perspective – and ultimately, Yuu’s offhand “sometimes good things will happen” provided the answer. Hopes and goals are important for keeping us focused and moving forward, but life has its own rewards even in the absence of a specific purpose, and as long as you keep living, you will eventually find new experiences that were worth living for.
In its fourth episode, Girls’ Last Tour tackled the purpose of living from a different angle, as it questioned what we can hope to leave behind. Yuu and Chi’s acquisition of a camera naturally facilitated a conversation on impermanence, as the girls reflected on how a photograph might hope to outlast their own adventures. That in turn lead into their discovery of one of mankind’s most enduring wards against oblivion – the gods and temples we create, and the tales we tell of living for eternity in those gods’ favor. Yuu and Chi’s idle theorizing on the tenets of that temple served as a natural illustration of the fact that even our most sacred truths and impressive creations will eventually lose their meaning, and no longer serve as a reminder of anything but themselves. But Yuu and Chi don’t need gods to find purpose; sharing lunch in the shadow of an old god, their conversations once again emphasized that simply living and caring for each other is meaning enough, no matter how impermanent.
In short, Girls’ Last Tour has been directly grappling with some of the heaviest and most fundamental questions of human existence, and doing it in such a way that it never abandons the aesthetic wonder and personal warmth of Yuu and Chi’s journey. I don’t expect every episode to be such a piercing thematic treatise, but I’m very impressed by the show’s ability to navigate these topics gracefully, and always tether its points into the active adventures of its heroes. Let’s see what’s in store in Girls’ Last Tour’s fifth episode!
Summer 2019 – Week 2 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Week in Review. This summer’s slate of premieres was altogether far too entertaining, and has left me with a completely unsustainable slate of weekly viewing contenders. I’m sure you know what that means: it’s time to get ruthless. I can’t physically keep up with seven to nine weekly anime while also performing all my other anime-related duties, so something’s going to get the chopping block. A few properties are safe from this righteous culling – Vinland Saga is hanging above the fray due its three part premiere (not that I’d be dropping Vinland Saga either way), while Symphogear is probably just going to be watched in some marathon chunk as soon as the fourth season is fulling streaming. But for everything else, my judgement will be swift and merciless, and only the strong will survive. Let’s crack our knuckles and get down to work then, as we enter the Summer 2019 Week in Review Thunderdome!
Blue Flag – Volume 1
The first thing that struck me about Blue Flag was its attention to detail in terms of how clothing hangs on the bodies of its characters. For a great deal of manga, those classic school uniforms might as well be attached to the characters themselves, moving neatly in sequence with their own movements. But in Blue Flag, the unique stresses and hanging edges of clothes that don’t quite fit you are always apparent. You can see where the cast’s clothes stretch, see the lines of bone beneath the fabric, and see how different characters either successfully transform their uniforms into an expression of self, or resign themselves to the shapelessness of clothes that never quite fit them.
Hugtto! Precure – Episode 9
I’ve checked the stars, sifted through the tea leaves, and consulted with the Old Ones, and it is abundantly clear that it is time for more Hugtto! Precure. In the show’s last episode, the introduction of Henri prompted Homare to reconsider the trajectory of her life, and her decision to step back from the rigorous training demands of a classic professional skater trajectory. Henri frankly and convincingly argued that taking a break at this point could easily be detrimental to her career prospects – and in response, Homare argued with equal certainty that it was the close support of her friends that had given her the courage to return to the ice at all, and that their continued support gave her a kind of strength unreachable through personal effort alone.
Henri ultimately ceded to this argument, because Henri’s a pretty great character. The episode’s treatment of Henri was likely its greatest strength, from its positive framing of his androgynous, multiracial identity to the way it managed to cast him as an “episode antagonist” while still keeping his position consistently sympathetic. It was an episode that clearly demonstrated the strengths of Hugtto’s storytelling, and I’ve been eager to watch the next one for far too long. Let’s see what’s in store in the ninth Hugtto! Precure!
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion – Review
I couldn’t just stop with the series, right? Today I offer my second long-form review of Hideaki Anno’s stunning masterwork, this time tackling the apocalyptic film that served as the series’ heart-wrenching epilogue. All of the psychological richness and aesthetic beauty of Evangelion is paid off in full through this astonishing film, a film just as beautiful and relevant decades after its first release. I hope you enjoy my review.
