Welp, looks like I’m writing at Crunchyroll now. I’ve got a new column over there starting up this week, and opening with a closer look at just one element of Mob Psycho’s first episode. If all goes according to plan, that’ll be the general style – deep dives on specific ideas or characters or elements of craft that pull our favorite shows together. I’m very excited to start on this project, and hope you enjoy my first piece!
You can check out my first article right here.
The Planetes crew was back to the grind this episode, having returned from the moon and immediately being put back to work. While Hachi and Tanabe’s lives largely returned to business as usual, Fee opened this episode by meeting with her old coworker Dolf, now a division manager within Technora. Though Fee wanted to reminisce about the good old days, Dolf had a forward-thinking proposal for Fee – accept a promotion out of the Debris unit and directly into Central. Her talents are too good for a group as pointless and disparaged as Debris. He needs her where he can use her.
It’s time for a date! Ringo’s ever-demanding diary has upped the ante once again, and so this episode, she’s planning to take Tabuki out for a birdwatching expedition. As the episode opens, we see fate is in the air, represented through Ringo’s happy shoujo stars. Shoma is surprised merely by Ringo’s presence in his house, as he is the typical teenage protagonist – but Kanba has much bigger plans, and so he tasks his brother with tailing Ringo on her journey.
Planetarian continued to be its hopeful, melancholy self in this third episode, as Yumemi’s long-awaited projection served as a painting of mankind’s hopes etched on a canvas of its dire failures. Planetarian is a very small-scale version of exactly the kind of stuff I like, and though its somewhat flat aesthetics and limited characterization don’t allow for any truly soaring heights, it’s still a very competent and engaging production. I am having a good time with this sad robot.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Dear lord, one week after the retrospective and we’re already a quarter through the season. This season ended up offering a stronger collection of shows than I was initially expecting, meaning I get to be fairly discerning in choosing what I actually keep up with. At this point, I’m legitimately excited about everything I’m watching – we’ve got a great mix of pure fun (Love Live, Thunderbolt Fantasy) and engaging drama (Orange, Planetarian), with Mob Psycho offering a dash of action and visual creativity. Let’s start with those new Love Lives and run this week down!
Orange has held firm for three great episodes now, though I’m hearing the production is actually going through some behind-the-scenes disasters. Fortunately, Orange already isn’t really a show I watch for the grace of its character animation – the director has always been a bit of a weird fit, but the fundamentals of his idiosyncratic style actually mesh pretty well with Orange’s equally unusual style of dialogue and storytelling. Barring some kind of serious rally from Battery, Orange is the current reigning prestige drama, and it’s bearing that crown with relative grace. I demand a steady diet of at least one of these every single season.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode three notes below.
Mob Psycho’s second episode turned out to be nearly as visually compelling as the first, and did great work in polishing Mob’s sympathetic character. Mob Psycho’s visual strengths are very obvious, but I’m really happy to also see Mob and Reigen gaining texture over time. I dropped Space Dandy because it was visual experimentation with nowhere to go – as much as I appreciate strong art design, I need to care about what’s happening. So far, it seems like Mob Psycho is going to fit that bill.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode two notes below.
I knew I was in for some shit even just by reading the genre tags for this one, which included a nice mix of things like “anal,” “bestiality,” and “dystopia.” And Keep on Vibrating certainly didn’t disappoint there – the seven stories here offer a pretty consistent mix of prostitution, violence against women, and occasional scatterings of war and cultural decay. Keep on Vibrating doesn’t quite match the overtly misanthropic tenor of Denpa Teki na Kanojo, but its author sure has a lot of violence in his head. And that’s about all there is to it.
(incidentally, there’s definitely going to be some NSFW image links in this one, so watch out!)
Continuing through Hosoda’s catalog, today I reviewed his newest and likely messiest original film. The Boy and the Beat has a lot of awkward parts, but my second viewing actually ended up being a lot more rewarding than the first – I knew it wasn’t going to be “followup to Wolf Children” good, so I could appreciate the many, many individually compelling moments. Hosoda’s dramatic priorities largely match my own – plot is basically always working in service of characters and relationships, not the other way around. In The Boy and the Beast, that ultimately results in a film that feels disjointed and somewhat lacks momentum, but the things he actually cares about are as strong as ever.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Episode three starts off with that eternal cavern of gender-based insecurities, gym class. Well, morning exercises more specifically, but the drama is the same – singled out by the teacher, Takatsuki is informed that he will have to start wearing a bra tomorrow, and promptly collapses. Puberty is resulting in unwelcome changes for both Takatsuki and Nitori, and the question of how they will be able to define themselves becomes more pressing all the time.