Author Archives: Bobduh

Girls’ Last Tour – Episode 7

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I’m in a deeply melancholy mood today, due to some real-world tragedies that aren’t related to Girls’ Last Tour in any way. I normally try to remain an upbeat and energetic traveling companion for these watch-alongs, but it’s a truly awful day for the anime community at large, and I’m guessing you’d all realize pretty quickly if I was faking positivity. Sometimes the world can be so senseless in its cruelty that you begin to question the point of trying at all – if all good things can be so easily undone by random hatefulness, what hope is there to even strive to build good things? It sometimes seems like the most powerful force in human nature is how some people can act with complete, even gleeful disregard for the suffering they inflict on others. And with devils like that roaming around, what hope do any of the rest of us have?

I’m watching Girls’ Last Tour now because Girls’ Last Tour doesn’t try to deny any of that. It’s not a beacon of untarnished positivity – it essentially starts from the assumption that all striving is hopeless and all dreams will fail, and attempts to make sense of living in the face of that. Its world is a crumbling testament to the fact that in spite of our grand ambitions, our selfishness and capacity for violence will ultimately undo all we have accomplished. In Girls’ Last Tour, all we can truly believe in is that one day will follow another, and that some people are genuinely decent. It posits that that’s enough, and I hope it’s right; in today’s world, it feels like we’ll be testing the show’s philosophy soon enough regardless. Keep moving. Keep striving. Be kind. If we don’t have each other we have nothing, so please try to bring some good to the world.

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Summer 2019 – Week 8 in Review

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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!

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Why It Works: What to Expect from the My Hero Academia Anime’s Fourth Season!

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Today on Why It Works, it’s time for some shameless promotion, as I break down just a few of the things to look forward to in My Hero Academia’s fast-approaching fourth season. If you’ve read the manga, none of this will be new to you, but if you haven’t, this post should offer a spoiler-free sampler of the directions the story will soon be taking. Have at it!

What to Expect from the My Hero Academia Anime’s Fourth Season!

A Bright Mechanical Dawn: Patlabor The Movie

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Many giant robot properties are, most fundamentally, about the power and freedom of becoming your adult self. Often centered on young men on the cusp of adulthood, their robotic instruments become vehicles through which those boys can explore the responsibility of genuinely impacting society, and deciding what kind of mark they want to leave on the world. It’s a robust metaphor that gracefully implies the world-shifting nature of adolescence, but the dramatic range of giant robot narratives expands far beyond individual transformation, as the brilliant Patlabor demonstrates. Developed throughout the late ‘80s by the five-artist Headgear collective, and set only a brief decade after its own creation, Patlabor focuses on a very different kind of transformation – not on one boy becoming a man, but on Japan becoming a modern and technologically advanced global power.

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Ojamajo Doremi Sharp – Episode 4

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Pack it in folks, it’s just about time for some more Ojamajo Doremi. Doremi’s second season has been a total joy so far, with the trials of taking care of Hana-chan offering an emotionally rich and consistently rewarding focal point for the show’s continuing drama. It really does feel like the girls have had to grow up a little bit – from the relatively carefree adventures of chasing after episodic Bad Items, they’re now being forced to accept the compromises necessary for embracing adult responsibilities, and putting the needs of their little magical time bomb over their own desires. Last episode saw Pop demonstrating the inherent rewards of accepting such responsibilities, as her time spent caring for Hana-chan ended up giving her the strength to finally pass her witch exams.

That episode also served as a beautiful demonstration of Doremi’s substantial aesthetic strengths, as acclaimed director Shigeyasu Yamauchi lent his unique talents to an episode full of evocative layouts and standout visual sequences. The moody framing of the Maho-dou, Pop and Onpu’s shared lullaby, Pop’s dazzling entrance into the Witch World – Doremi’s always a good-looking show, but Yamauchi’s presence added a welcome touch of dark fantasy surrealism, and apparently he’s directing this episode as well. Let’s see what he brings to Doremi’s wonderful world in episode four!

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The Woman Called Fujiko Mine – Episode 7

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Heck yeah folks, let’s get back to The Woman Called Fujiko Mine! This show’s last episode was a spiraling maelstrom of complex gender politics and confining social expectations, with Fujiko and her various associates serving as gleeful foxes in the henhouse of a girls’ private school. Combining this show’s insightful focus on gendered expectations, social performances, and the nature of feminine power with the classic touchstones of a Class S yuri drama was a masterstroke, and resulted in the most thematically complex and generally gripping episode of Fujiko yet.

On a pure aesthetic level, pairing Fujiko Mine’s ornate, richly textured designs with the stylized and detailed sets of a traditional “boarding school flower garden” resulted in an absolute bounty of beautiful compositions, with elaborate backgrounds sharing space with more metaphorically driven layouts rich in shadow and contrast. And on a thematic level, that episode managed to channel Lupin’s classic reversals and counter-reversals through a nested series of adolescent social expectations, with Fujiko’s manipulation of her love-starved students eventually being countered by an opponent eager to use Fujiko’s own favorite trick – telling your enemy exactly what they want to hear. 

In the context of a deeply repressed private school, Fujiko reveled in assuming the role of sexual aggressor, while Oscar simultaneously gleefully embraced and harshly judged himself for assuming the role of lusted-over “prey.” Their complex roles served as a clever distillation of the emotional contradictions inherent in both repressed adolescence specifically, and how women are assumed to exist in society more generally. And ultimately, Oscar’s contempt for his own actions seemed to echo the contempt society at large serves towards any expression of feminine agency, be they defined as Madonna or Whore. It was a goddamn searing episode, and also somehow light and playful at the same time. I don’t expect another episode quite like that one, but I’m eager to see whatever these charming thieves get up to next. Let’s get to it!

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Summer 2019 – Week 7 in Review

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Well folks, it was time for the Week in Review about an hour ago, and I’m just now typing this introduction, so I’ll keep things brief. The shows I’m watching are very good, and this week offered a bunch of very good episodes – Granbelm pulled off another totally stunning action spectacle, Given retained its sharp emotional acuity and believable characterization, and Carole & Tuesday offered another top-tier vignette that managed a surprising balance of comedy and sympathetic drama. The summer season continues to be extremely strong, and I’m happy to enjoy a crop of shows that could all conceivably be top picks within a less impressive season. Let’s get to the breakdown!

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Why It Works: Drama with All the Senses: The Rich Storytelling of the Anime given

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Jeez, these titles don’t really work when my crunchyroll title also contains a colon, huh? Anyway, today on Why It Works, I dive into the excellent use of visual and sound design in this season’s terrific given, specifically breaking down the tonal tricks and visual metaphors of the fifth’s episode most important scene. Let’s get to it!

Drama with All the Senses: The Rich Storytelling of the Anime given

Neon Genesis Evangelion – Episode 12

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We witness its genesis as a great light, a blinding spark searing the atmosphere, visible even from the surface of the moon. Then comes the furious wind, as our vision cuts in to a snowy hellscape stained rust red, as if the earth itself has suffered some great and terrible wound. A ragged figure trudges with purpose across this nightmare, his arms cradling an unconscious young girl. As we peer down through a shattered bunker, the man sets his cargo down in a metal tube, and she briefly wakes – but her cry of “father” is cut off, their final connection severed by the sealing of the tube. And then the shivering landscape upends entirely, as a great and terrible creature rises to remake the world.

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Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s – Episode 11

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Hello folks, and welcome back for another episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. We’re well into the show’s final act at this point, with Fate and Nanoha already having squared off against first Hayate, and then the awakened Book of Darkness itself. We’ve also resolved the duplicity and betrayal of Chrono’s admiral friend, who managed to successfully fuck everything up just before his plan was discovered. The admiral’s meddling backed Hayate into a corner in order to summon the Book itself, and then the Book’s own trauma prevented Nanoha and Fate from negotiating it out of its apocalyptic plans.

Now, with Nanoha defeated and Fate actually absorbed by the book, success or failure will likely come down to this season’s true heroine: Hayate. Just like how Nanoha’s first season was essentially a Fate story that Nanoha also took part in, so has this season most centrally been about Hayate, and her efforts to maintain and protect her family in spite of her curse. Personality-wise, Hayate is basically a version of Nanoha stripped of all of Nanoha’s easy gifts – she starts out alone, has to work hard to create a family, and even then is plagued by physical frailty, in contrast with the magical power Nanoha is able to use to enforce her worldview. But here at the end, with Hayate already stranded somewhere inside the book, the battle will come down to the one thing they share – their unshakable personal strength, and absolute love for the people they care about. We’ve reached the thesis of the season, and I’m thrilled to see how it plays out. Let’s get to it!

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