Author Archives: Bobduh

Scorching Ping Pong Girls – Episode 11

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Hello everybody, and welcome back for another episode of Scorching Ping Pong Girls! This week, we’ll finally be… wait, that was last episode. Koyori and Kururi played out their long-hyped match, Kururi’s unhealthy fixation on “proving herself worthy” was resolved through Koyori’s joyful play, and the two vowed to continue their rivalry at the actual tournament. Our heroes’ battle with Mozuyami ended with a glorious visual spectacle and satisfying emotional resolution, and Scorching Ping Pong Girls concluded the arc that has dominated its entire second half. So, uh, what do we do now?

Well, as it turns out, the process of adapting a continuing manga into a one-off anime season can be a little messy, and so it looks like we’ll be wrapping up the series with two episodes of post-arc downtime and training sessions. While this is certainly a little odd in a structural sense, it’s the kind of compromise you tend to get used to in this medium, and I’m frankly eager to see how the cast play out all the personal growth they’ve recently experienced in a less competitive venue. A great deal of Scorching Ping Pong Girls’ appeal is how much its cast obviously all love each other, and the Mozuyami arc featured reaffirmations of those relationships all across the main team. Let’s see how the dust settles in the next Scorching Ping Pong Girls!

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Fall 2019 – Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective

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Hello folks, and welcome to hell. Having fought my way through nearly every premiere of the fall season, I’ve weathered injustices and disappointments both familiar and entirely new, all to bring you the freshest possible anime delicacies. There were a huge number of new releases this fall season, but with so many of the season’s high-profile shows being sequels, separating the strongest newcomers from the pack seemed even more arduous than usual. I succeeded, though, and I return to you with arms full of alluring new cartoons. Additionally, many of the shows that are either continuing into the fall or commencing new sequels are also really darn good – if you’re not current on them, I’d highly recommend supplementing your viewing schedule with something like Vinland Saga, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, or Chihayafuru.

As usual, I wrote full length reviews for all of the premieres I’ll be summarizing here, which you can check out over at ANN’s preview guide. I’ll also be including links to each individual review below, as I run down the season’s new prospects from best to worst, and separate them into loose tiers of view-worthiness. Returning to help me define those tiers will be an array of representative Chaika gifs, because everybody loves Chaika and it’s easier to describe gifs than to write funny descriptions anyway. Without further ado, let’s break down the fresh premieres of the fall anime season!

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Why It Works: Nick’s Anime Picks for Fall 2019

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For this week’s Why It Works article, I ran through my usual process of sorting out Crunchyroll-specific recommendations for the coming anime season. This has felt like a truly unending preview week, likely because it actually stretched across two full weeks, but the end is finally in sight, and I’ll be posting my Virtually Every First Episode post on Wednesday. We’re back in action, folks!

Nick’s Anime Picks for Fall 2019

Fall 2019 – First Impressions, Part Two

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Preview week continues to barrel onward, with each new day offering a fresh handful of dubious anime premieres. I’ll be frank: the season is not looking good at the moment, though that’s pretty much what I expected. Aside from Legend of the Galactic Heroes, nothing has premiered that I actually feel compelled to stick with, in spite of an abundance of “pretty okay” premieres. If anything, this appears to be a season mostly focused on comedy, and anime comedy is rarely my scene. Still, there’s been plenty of perfectly watchable shows so far, and my curmudgeonliness shouldn’t spoil your fun. Here’s my second wave of fall 2019 reviews!

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Fall 2019 – First Impressions, Part One

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Preview week barrels onward, but with only a couple new premieres today, I figured it was past time to take stock of the season so far. The first wave of show releases actually hasn’t been so bad on the whole, though given the highlights include two isekai-riffing comedies, I’m guessing this group probably won’t be impacting my own watch schedule. Still, if you’re looking for comedy, sports drama, or slice of life, we’ve had a few respectable contenders so far – and if you’re looking for garbage, well, there’s been a fair bit of that too. You can check out the full list of reviews right here, or scroll below for my own rankings and links to individual reviews. Let’s get to it!

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Summer 2019 – Week 13 in Review

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At the time this article is posting, I’ll almost certainly be in some sort of half-conscious fugue state, foaming and gnashing my teeth as I fight through yet another mediocre anime premiere. Fortunately, from whatever point in the past I’m actually writing this, I still have enough sanity left to break down the final embers of the summer season. With given already concluded, we’ve only got two shows to cover this time, but let’s try and make the most of them. For the very last time, it’s the Summer 2019 Week in Review!

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Rilakkuma and Kaoru – Episode 2

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You wouldn’t think a bright, stop-motion story about a young woman and her three stuffed animal friends would offer such consistently piercing meditations on aging and purpose, but here we are. Rilakkuma and Kaoru’s first episode offered a direct and familiar punch to the jaw, centered on the difficulty of maintaining contact with friends as you move into adulthood, and the fear of being left behind by the people you love. In the end, Kaoru’s friends didn’t all suddenly reappear in a glorious refutation of those fears; after all, that process of separation is an inescapable fact of adulthood. It’s not all sunshine and roses – in fact, it’s more often about coming to terms with imperfect circumstances, and finding the joy in what you can. Kaoru can’t rekindle her college friendships, but she can sit and watch the stars by the riverbank, and maybe that’s enough.

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Scorching Ping Pong Girls – Episode 10

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The preliminary matches have all been concluded, and the record stands at two matches to our brave and gallant heroes, and two matches for our fiendish, nefarious villains. After their enemies ruthlessly cut down Hokuto and Hanabi, Suzumegahara’s heroes rallied back with Mune and Kiruka’s doubles match, followed by Agari’s close win against Mozuyami’s captain Zakuro. Now, with Koyori’s faith in her own play having been restored by Agari’s victory, it’s time for the true battle. You folks ready for battle!? You folks ready for BLOOD?!?!?

I’m pretty excited personally, if you hadn’t guessed. But I don’t think I’m alone here – this series has literally spent two-thirds of its running time hyping up this particular match, with Kururi having been framed as the “true threat” of Mozuyami from the very start. Additionally, Scorching Ping Pong Girls’ core theme is “finding a positive, fulfilling reason to play,” and Kururi represents the most unhealthy negative articulation of that theme. Early on in the season, the show’s central emotional conflict was Agari learning to play for the joy of play itself, instead of the brittle comfort of having her skills validated. The moment that conflict was resolved, the narrative essentially introduced Kururi as a super-Agari, someone even more invested in table tennis as a source of validation, rather than personal joy. Will Koyori’s joyful play and inherent puppy-ness convince Kururi to play for her own sake, and realize that seeking her own happiness is also the best way to make Zakuro happy? I mean, probably, but I still wanna see how we get there. LET’S GET TO IT!

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Girls’ Last Tour – Episode 8

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I didn’t really intend for tragedy to always return me to Girls’ Last Tour writeups, but here I am again. This has not been an easy summer for me, and Girls’ Last Tour is pretty much where my headspace is – “getting along with the feeling of hopelessness” and all of that. At its core, Girls’ Last Tour is a story about death specifically, and about things ending more generally. The decaying civilization that Chi and Yuu struggle through is a reminder of the impermanence of all things, the kind of reminder that makes it impossible to live without acknowledging your own impermanence. Yuu and Chi cannot console themselves with “our lives will be remembered,” “our actions will contribute to a greater cause,” or anything else that implies a kind of eternity – the crumbled streets they putter through stand as a guard against any such illusions, emphasizing that all things eventually end.

As we make our own way through lives full of restless action and ambitious plans, perpetually reflecting on impermanence isn’t necessarily a helpful exercise – yeah sure, it may all turn to dust eventually, but we still gotta work and eat and take care of each other. But when you are reminded of impermanence, and lose something that cannot be replaced, it helps to have stories like Girls’ Last Tour, which acknowledge that loss while insisting that life is worth living even though life will end. There is so much beauty in this world, and I am forever thankful for the stories that acknowledge both the beauty and the sorrow, and greet the inevitable tragedies of living with honesty and hope. Living is its own meaning, and love is its own reward. Let’s return to the irrepressibly joyous Girls’ Last Tour.

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Summer 2019 – Week 12 in Review

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Alright folks, pile in, pile in. The summer season isn’t technically over yet, but we’re basically there – Granbelm and Carole & Tuesday still need to pop out their last episodes, but Given is already over, and the fall premieres are just a week ago. That’s frankly a terrifying thought to me, as I feel like I’ve been perpetually trying to catch up this entire season, and have no idea how I’m going to power my way through O Maidens and Vinland Saga. But hey, that’s a problem for another day – for now, I’ve got plenty of rambling thoughts on the week’s cartoons to share with you all. Without further ado, it’s the Week in Review!

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