I’ve got a new review for everyone today, this time of 2016’s kinda disappointing Izetta: The Last Witch. Izetta is one of those shows that’s just good enough to make you frustrated it’s not actually good, but I had a fair enough time with it all the same, and wouldn’t mind more of these inventive, middle-caliber action adventures. Some shows are actually a struggle to get through, but Izetta was pretty much always somewhat entertaining, and sometimes even pretty great. Here’s my review:
Our journey through Chihayafuru continues! The last episode was more of a role-filler than a standout, but it did a fine job of both articulating and celebrating just how much Tsutomu’s research helps the team, an unglamorous role that doesn’t really lend itself to pulse-pounding narrative drama. And having emphasized the close bonds of Chihaya’s original five teammates, those teammates are now all on the field at last, fighting in the semifinals of the friggin’ national tournament. This is the closest this team has ever gotten to the top, and possibly the closest they’ll ever get, so I’m guessing every match from here out will be its own reward – a very close competition designed to thrill purely based on its tactical interplay, not just fit some role in a larger narrative. And with Chihaya now facing down the woman Yumin beat to challenge the Queen, we’re guaranteed at least one desperate and extremely high-level karuta battle. The preamble has been ambled and the preliminary matches liminaried – let’s buckle in for a high-intensity episode of CHIHAYAFURU!
Even from the cover of the first volume, it’s clear that The Promised Neverland isn’t your standard Shonen Jump property. The base art style favors delicate, almost wobbly linework and evocative scribbles over the bold splashes of black and white favored by, say, My Hero Academia or Bleach. The cover is confident in this fraying delicacy, happy to let a clearly defined spiraling staircase fade into half-imagined detail, and in doing so evoking the visual style of something like a children’s picture book. This doesn’t feel like the steady work of a Jump veteran; this feels like the first manga of a dedicated illustrator, perfectly suiting its fairy tale storytelling.
Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Week in Review. With Legend of the Galactic Heroes taking the week off, my week in anime lost twenty-five percent of its volume, but worked hard to make up for in quality what it lacked in quantity. This week’s My Hero Academia was mostly just “solid original material (plus one highlight), adapted competently,” but both Hinamatsuri and Megalo Box knocked it out of the park, demonstrating both their consistent strengths and a variety of new tricks. Those two make for a pretty weird combination, but between them they cover an oddly exhaustive range of the stuff I look for in anime – stylish action, tactically-minded sports narratives, warm comedy, charming character pieces, etc. I’m basically just missing “auteur-directed,” “strong romance,” “themey-wemey show,” and “psychological drama” on my bingo sheet, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes is generally happy to hold down the theme fort. The anime is good and even these three shows have offered me plenty to talk about, so let’s get right down to another week in review!
This week on Why It Works, I finally start on a big craft breakdown for Megalo Box, exploring the many smart decisions that made its recent Aragaki fight so spectacular. Megalo Box has always been a stylish and entertaining show, but the storytelling here felt the most sturdily constructed and rewarding so far. I hope you enjoy the piece!
Junk Dog Vs. Soldier: MEGALOBOX’s Finest Fight
In trying to collect my thoughts on Annihilation, my mind kept returning to that earlier scifi/horror “humans are overrun by a new order” classic Jurassic Park, and that film’s own relative optimism. Putting aside one-liners like “must go faster” and “clever girl,” I feel like that film’s soul was captured in the line “life finds a way.” It’s unsurprising that a heart-on-sleeve director like Spielberg would make a movie about dinosaurs eating people into something life-affirming, and I can’t help but shiver at the contrast between that and Alex Garland’s comparatively soul-destroying Annihilation. Life might find a way in Annihilation, but it’s highly doubtful that we’ll be finding a way along with it.
My Hero Academia followed up on what basically felt like its first act climax with some cooldown in this volume, focusing on lots of nitty-gritty tactical fights and introducing a whole country’s worth of new heroes in training. It’s a good time, you can check out my further thoughts through the link below, etc etc.
Today I’ve got a review of one of Monogatari’s strangest properties, the mini-season of vignettes known as Koyomimonogatari. This season’s certainly pretty different structurally from Monogatari’s usual fare, but if you’ve made it this far in the series, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t enjoy its rambling nonsense. Here’s the review!
At long last, we’re back for more Chihayafuru! Well, maybe “at long last” from where you’re standing – from my position, I actually just finished writing up the previous episode a few hours ago, and simply couldn’t wait to continue the group tournament. I tricked you into thinking an equal amount of time had passed for both of us by feigning familiarity, a little bit of “movie magic” for all you folks back home.
Anyway, yes, Chihayafuru. The previous episode was indeed a can’t-put-down tier one, and not even because it was centered on any particularly climactic or stressful match – it was just a well-articulated team battle from start to finish, making the absolute most of a lopsided team of opponents with one very specific strength. “This team has mastered quiz games so well they’re natural card memorizers” wouldn’t seem like the most dramatically fertile of gimmicks, but it ended up resulting in a fight that highlighted both Chihaya’s greatest strength (her buzzer-beating speed, now defined more as a trainable skill than a natural talent) and her greatest weakness (her emotional flappability and inability to handle unexpected situations). And with that match concluded and Arata’s tournament eligibility confirmed, it seems likely we may get a more bare-knuckle brawl this time, involving the entire team in a generally close match. But first, let’s see what Nishida has to say about Tsutomu!
Princess Tutu’s seventh episode represented a serious break from the show’s initially episodic nature, offering a sequence of revelations that each undercut the simplicity of “Tutu must spend each episode seeking a shard and ultimately returning it to Mytho.” We learned that Drosselmeyer truly has been dead for a long time, and that his goal in setting up this narrative was nothing more lofty than finding a way to amuse himself. We also witnessed the first sequence of actual, meaningful communication between Mytho and Tutu, where Mytho’s initial fear of her ultimately gave way to a genuine desire to see her task completed. And finally, we received direct confirmation that Rue and the raven are at the very least dramatically linked, if not the same person. As Tutu nears the end of its first half, it seems clear that the magical girl template which sustained its early episodes is beginning to fray, and its characters are starting to test their narrative bonds.