Well hell guys, I guess the anime is just gonna keep being good. Love Live and Kino’s Journey actually stepped up their game this week, and everything else seems to be holding steady. My schedule still can’t really handle this number of shows, so after last week saw me letting go of Girls’ Last Tour (which was actually great!), this week I’m taking a break from SideM (which is also great!). There’s not really anything wrong with either of those shows, but I’m just a slow watcher with a lot on my plate, so they’ll have to wait for a rainy day. Outside of that, this continues to be the strongest season of the year, with major highlights in basically every genre I care about. It’s also wonderful to have a season where not one, but two of my top choices were shows that weren’t even on my radar coming in. Anime is still full of surprises!
Author Archives: Bobduh
Wandering Son – Episode 10
Things do not go well for Nitori.
Wandering Son’s tenth episode opens with us looking down on Nitori, Maho, and their parents, seated at a table that’s framed like some kind of interrogation room. Top-down lighting enhances the sense of drama, while a ticking clock replaces last episode’s urgent cicadas. Nitori’s mom jumps swiftly from “are you being bullied?” to “Maho, you used to dress him as a girl. You’re a bad influence on him.” Nitori’s trip to school ends in the worst possible way.
March comes in like a lion – Episode 24
This episode of March comes in like a lion seemed in large part dedicated to humanizing Gotou, which was an inherently fraught and not terribly successful exercise. We didn’t really learn anything that substantively shifted our understanding of his character, and downplaying Kyouko’s depressed, dependent status through wacky visual comedy just felt like a terribly misguided call. Based on everything we know, Gotou is just a plain shitty dude, and this episode’s sympathetic framing made it just that bit harder to buy into the reality of its world.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode notes below.
Just Because! – Episode 3
Hey guys, it turns out Just Because! is a really, really, really good show. After two excellent opening episodes, the show continued with… an almost equally excellent third episode. The character acting has dipped a bit, but that’s to be expected of a mortal show, and everything else about the production remains absolutely stellar. We rarely get a show that so completely surprises me, but at the moment, Just Because! is on track to conclude near the top of my year’s rankings. Good times!
You can check out my full episode review over at ANN, or my notes below.
Why It Works: Wonder and Terror in The Ancient Magus’ Bride
Today on Crunchyroll, I dug into the unique axis of magical intrigue that guides Magus’ Bride’s most beautiful and chilling moments. The show is extremely good at capturing a specific kind of Old World magic that you don’t often see in anime, and I was happy to explore the eccentricities of its style. I hope you enjoy the piece!
Wonder and Terror in The Ancient Magus’ Bride
Chihayafuru – Episode 14
Let’s get back to Chihayafuru! Last episode saw the team competing in the team portion of the national tournament, where a sudden fever by Chihaya was contrasted against Arata’s journey to the tournament itself. Arata’s material there was both critical and very well-executed, simultaneously selling his complex relationship with his grandfather and his own multifaceted personality. The episode more or less shifted Arata from being a mythic, fated goal for Chihaya to being an actual breathing person the audience can truly invest in. Even a sports trope as hoary as “my passion for this sport killed someone I loved, thus I can never play again” can feel believable and emotionally charged with the right execution, and last episode’s mixture of warm memories and well-observed trauma fit the bill. Let’s see how Arata actually fits in to Chihaya’s present-day life!
Ruin and Salvation in Casshern Sins
Rusted metal flakes tumble across a desolate plain. In the distance, vast shelfs of sand and stone stand like communal grave markers, the last enduring remnants of a lost civilization. What few creatures endure in this landscape are frayed themselves, joints creaking, eyes red with soot and sand. On the shores of a great sea, unnatural shapes rise like great gears or fossils, either truth telling of vitality long past. And in this strange place, a child’s laughter, echoing through brownish dunes before drifting away on the wind.
Fall 2017 – Week 2 in Review
Hey guys, it’s time for the Week in Review. I got pretty complacent over the summer season, what with the total absence of watchable anime and all. With only three shows to write about weekly, I was able to show off by tossing in random episodes of Game of Thrones and Rick and Morty, adding content and still not having to write as much as usual. But here in Fall 2017, the Week in Review has come roaring back. As I write this opening paragraph, I’ve still got maybe half a dozen shows left to watch, and that’s after already getting through five this week. Sanity will demand I cut my schedule down to reasonable size at some point, but for now, you all get to enjoy the hard-fought fruits of my endless labor. From a season of drought, we’ve arrived at a season where the anime is just too damn good. Make up your minds, you friggin’ cartoons.
Alright, enough grumbling. Let’s start wherever we can and run this towering week down!
For My Sisters, For Myself: Tsubasa Tiger
Tsubasa Tiger could be seen as the first ending of Monogatari, the moment when one of its central figures finally graduates from their apparition’s pain. Of course, in Monogatari, there’s no “escaping” your troubles. Oshino frames the inevitability of psychic pain, and the ways that pain is linked to our fundamental identities, as “we can only save ourselves.” In her audio drama letter to Black Hanekawa, Hanekawa frames this inevitability a little differently. When we tell the story of our pain, we tell the story of ourselves. Raised in a broken home, Hanekawa has herself become a broken home. She finds herself unusual and condemnable, but her story of familial abuse and emotional abnegation only reflects her profound, undeniable human worth.
March comes in like a lion – Episode 23
March comes in like a lion returns more with a whimper than a bang, dutifully walking us through two low-key chapters at the newly founded shogi/science club. This material was charming enough, and was certainly executed with plenty of visual flair, but felt totally misplaced as the first episode of a new season. It’s unfortunate that the show’s grand return is kinda undercut by its long-term structural issues, but as far as execution goes, these were definitely some nicely animated chapters. I’m sure the show’s production will fall apart again soon, but I’ll savor this while it lasts!
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode notes below.