Author Archives: Bobduh

Fall 2018 – Week 3 in Review

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Why does the anime do this to me. I feel like Run with the Wind, Gridman, and Tsurune could all easily have claimed the top spot in either spring or summer – here in fall, having all three of them at once just seems excessive. I know you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but couldn’t we have parceled out these horses a little more consistently throughout the seasons? My cup runneth over with gift horses.

Anyway, complaints about Too Much Good Anime aside, there sure is a whole lot of good anime this season. Tsurune finally made its debut this week, and stunned from start to finish with its gorgeous color work, efficient characterization, and generally compelling art design. Run with the Wind maintained its cheerful general excellence, while Gridman demonstrated that its “default mode” is still a show well worth celebrating. With the action spectacles also holding steady, this is looking to quite possibly be the best season of the year overall. It feels almost certain that over half of my current watching schedule will end up in my top ten of the year, with only winter’s formidable Evergarden-After the Rain-Universe-Laid Back Camp block offering much competition. I am thrilled to be enjoying this much anime, and eager to share all my enthusiasm with you. Let’s start with our running boys and run this week down!

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Why It Works: The Dramatic Power of a Great Anime Ending Song

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Today on Crunchyroll, I directly explored a topic that’s always been very interesting to me, but I’ve never really handled explicitly before. That’s frankly become a rarity at this point, given the hundreds of articles I’ve written, so I was happy to do a very specific dive into the various ways a smartly chosen ending song can actually elevate the drama of a show. I hope you enjoy the piece!

The Dramatic Power of a Great Anime Ending Song

Garo: Divine Flame – Review

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Today on ANN, I reviewed the Garo the Animation tie-in film, which was… well, basically just what you’d expect from a tie-in film. In spite of coming out years after the show and following on with the continuing lives of all its characters, this film’s actual narrative was pretty minimal. Instead, the focus was clearly on constructing beautiful sets and conducting outrageous fights, two Garo mainstays that made for a very entertaining viewing experience. You can check out my full review below!

Garo: Divine Flame

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha – Episode 6

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Alright folks, let’s settle in for another episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. The show has stuck relatively true to a conventional magical girl template so far, though it’s certainly offered its own interesting embellishments. Nanoha’s plentiful worldbuilding, for one; instead of offering a vaguely defined set of magical powers or binary conflict between eternal enemies (like in Precure, where it seems like the “sides” have existed for all of time), Nanoha seems determined to sketch out an entire magical/science fiction universe, with Fate’s antagonism coming from a place of individual grievance, not destined conflict. That meshes a little weirdly with the numbered items they’re gathering, which seem more like the kind of plot device you’d see in a world where everything actually does revolve around our protagonists. In Card Captor Sakura, Sakura gathers all the cards herself because this is a show about Sakura – in Nanoha, our heroine and her enemy seem less destined than accidental, and so there’s an interesting style tension there.

Beyond the unique interplay of Nanoha’s magical girl and scifi action roots, the show is also just, well, weird. The storytelling is an odd mix of material seemingly aimed at both older and younger audiences, the story labors over incidental conversations that don’t really explain themselves, and the visual execution ranges from genuinely inspired to either baffling or totally flat. That makes for a very imperfect show, but it’s great news for me – I love investigating messy stuff, and Nanoha is certainly messy. Let’s check out what’s in store for our heroes in episode six!

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Ojamajo Doremi – Episode 34

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Terrific news, everyone. Another month has come and gone, and so it’s time at last for some more Ojamajo Doremi. With Chihayafuru’s second season in the past and third season waiting in 2019, Ojamajo Doremi has once again assumed the mantle of my chief comfort food anime, and it serves that role with absolute distinction. On a plain aesthetic level, Doremi is simply a very good show – excellent characterization, simultaneously beautiful and charming art design, carefully crafted stories, etcetera etcetera. But beyond that, Doremi’s faith in the decency of people, and its gentle sympathy for its heroines’ struggles, is an oasis in a turbulent world, a sunny reading nook that I’m always happy to escape to.

Media that simply comforts you, whose principle goal is to make you feel safe and content and loved, gets a pretty bad rap in many critical circles. Obviously Ojamajo Doremi is intended to offer more than straight comfort food, but I personally feel the general disdain for “pleasant” or “unchallenging” media is fundamentally misguided. This is a very painful and complex world, and after dealing with all our daily challenges, sometimes we don’t want the shows we watch to actively squabble with us, to make us feel pain or attack our worldviews. Sometimes it’s been a long day and we just need a friend who’s there and happy to spend time with us, no expectations, no anxiety, just the natural contentment of being in a place you feel you belong. People deserve media that acknowledges that need, and media which makes us feel loved doesn’t have to be any less insightful, artistically compelling, or emotionally resonant. There is space for joy in the world and space for joy in art, and I’m happy to return to a show that is so willing to share its joy with us. I’m happy you’re all here, and I hope things are going okay. Let’s settle in for an episode of Ojamajo Doremi.

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Neon Genesis Evangelion – Episode 4

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A great part of it is the rain, or rather, the felt sensation of perpetual rain. It pours down at all times, holding us up in bus stations or entryways or lonely stairwells, forcing us to relive old failures again and again. It’s cold and damp, and it makes us feel cold and damp in turn, unclean, ashamed of our clammy skin. It steals color from our surroundings, painting everything in a somber gray, draining the vitality of the landscape just as it drains our passion for the things we love. Others seem not to notice the rain, but simply emulating their behavior doesn’t make it go away. Whether you ignore it or acknowledge it, the rain doesn’t care – in the malaise of depression, it will remain your only true companion.

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Fall 2018 – Week 2 in Review

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Holy crap, it’s time for the Week in Review. Having just finished working on the preview guide this past weekend, I had to hustle to catch up on what I wanted for today, and still haven’t really gotten the chance to expand beyond my four must-see properties. Fortunately, those must-see properties are offering more than enough entertainment to sustain me, between the reliably ridiculous action of Thunderbolt/JoJo and the newfound pleasures of Run with the Wind and Gridman. Gridman in particular is really stunning me so far; the show is building on styles of characterization and shot composition that echo some of my all-time favorite anime, while effortlessly carving out its own identity all the while. Even with relatively limited overall animation, Gridman is able to sell its world at all times through its gorgeous scene setting and purposeful, highly active direction. Let’s dispense with the preamble, then, and get right to this week in anime!

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Why It Works: Nick’s Picks for Fall 2018

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With the new season fully underway, it’s time for yet another seasonal tradition – my Crunchyroll roundup of all the shows I’d highly recommend. I didn’t really have to stretch at all for picks this time, seeing as the season’s actually terrific, and was even nice enough to distribute its quality across a broad spectrum of genres. Here’s the piece!

Nick’s Picks for Fall 2018

My Hero Academia, Volume 15 – Review

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My reviews of the My Hero Academia manga continue today, as I explore a volume that was unfortunately one of the messiest in the story’s run. It currently feels like Horikoshi is attempting some Hunter x Hunter-tier narrative cross-threading, but the world only has one Togashi, and Horikoshi isn’t him. Heavy exposition and a fundamentally drama-averse power in Nighteye’s vision made for an awkward volume on the whole, but I’m still excited to see where this all goes. With a full volume of preamble on the books, I have to imagine the yakuza raid is going to be a sight to see.

You can check out my full review over at ANN.

Simoun – Episode 16

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Let’s settle in for another episode of Simoun! The show’s last several episodes have done tremendous damage to the underlying fabric of this team, all while further elaborating on the individual motives of all our sybilla, and even reflecting Simoun’s overarching preoccupation with the natural conflict between faith and military pragmatism. They’ve frankly been one of the best stretch of episodes this show has seen yet, and have clearly demonstrated that the show’s consistent weaknesses in terms of pacing and narrative structure haven’t done anything to undercut its fascinating ideas or gripping character work. “Gripping ideas or characters, wibbly-wobbly narrative foundation” is pretty much how I’d characterize both Sho Aikawa and Mari Okada’s work more generally, but now that we’ve gotten out of the early episodes and their sometimes frustrating aimlessness, the show’s strengths are coming entirely into focus. We’re currently juggling close to a dozen individual character conflicts, and all of them are resulting in natural flare-ups of drama all through Chor Tempest, as personal motivation and public duty clash again and again. With most of the team gone and Neviril close to despair, is it Dominura’s turn to save the day? Let’s find out in Simoun #16!

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