Author Archives: Bobduh

Active Raid – Episode 11

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Active Raid had a relatively successful but also kinda bland episode this week, moving its pieces towards the end without much flair or energy. But that’s kind of the deal here – Active Raid has very rarely been an actually good show, it’s basically always just been a reasonably competent one. I never mind watching it, but also never feel legitimately invested in it. The giant robot episode was quite good, most of Rin’s material has been excellent, and that episode focused on Miho was also solid – outside of that, it’s just kind of a thing you can watch. Hopefully next season offers enough legitimately strong contenders that something like Active Raid’s bare competence wouldn’t put it near the top of the pack.

You can check out my full review over at ANN. No notes this time, I just watched this episode straight through!

Active Raid

ERASED – Episode 11

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ERASED was definitely much better this week, though a performance like last episode isn’t something a show can really recover from. I get into it in my review, but ultimately, it feels like ERASED would have been better off just not having a serial killer at all. The cat and mouse stuff in both timelines is almost uniformly worse than the rest of the show’s material, and the show doesn’t actually need a killer for this story to work. But either way, this episode was relatively low-key and full of nice character moments, so it falls in the good column even if it also included a speech about murdering hamsters. You take what you can get.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!

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Clarity and Humanity in The Beginner’s Guide

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The following post will contain plenty of spoilers for The Beginner’s Guide. I generally don’t include warnings like this, but consider the game is only a couple hours and well worth your time if you haven’t played it, I figured I might as well let you know now!

It feels more than a little awkward to be offering criticism of The Beginner’s Guide. After all, the game’s “villain,” if you can call him that, is a figure so intent on assigning a specific meaning to someone else’s work, and giving it a solvable “answer,” that he drives that friend out of creation altogether. On top of that, the game regularly analyzes itself – even if the narrator is incredibly presumptuous in the ways he defines and redefines the work of his friend, many of the questions the game implies are so directly entertained by that one self-conscious voice that analysis almost seems superfluous. The Beginner’s Guide is a set of concise arguments laid out both in dialogue and in actual, physical game space. It doesn’t have to say “for example” as it talks about some principle of game design or the fan/creator relationship – you play the example as the theory is discussed.

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Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 1 – Review

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This week I got around to the first volume of Legend of the Galactic Heroes! I enjoyed the book overall, though the prose was anything but graceful. The series’ best qualities are likely its scope and its anger – Legend of the Galactic Heroes tackles war and governance on a massive scale, and there is not one hint of glamour in its portrayal of combat. People die senselessly and in large numbers, and that’s just how war is. I appreciate that; plenty of stories in anime and elsewhere tend to make halfhearted gestures towards condemning violence while actually celebrating it, but Legend of the Galactic Heroes doesn’t indulge in any of that. It’s a very angry book.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!

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Winter 2016 – Week 10 in Review

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Well I guess some weeks have to be disasters. A couple of the shows I’m watching were fine this week, but there were some real terrible episodes in there, and one in particular… I don’t even know what to say. It’s pretty rare that a generally excellent show completely sets itself on fire just a few episodes before the end, but here we are. This is what we got. So let’s get right into it.

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Garzey’s Wing – Episode 1

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Why. Why would you have me watch this. What are you trying to prove.

I sit down after having watched the first episode of Garzey’s Wing and think “how should I write about this, in a tactical sense?” Not in the sense that I’m having difficulty thinking of an angle to take it from – in the sense that I want to write a piece that is just funny enough so that you people feel you’ve gotten your money’s worth, while not funny enough to tempt any of you assholes to pay for another one. This show is terrible.

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Puella Magi Madoka Magica – Episode 1

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Note: it’s pretty much impossible to fully discuss Madoka without getting into some spoilers, so be aware that later events will occasionally be referenced in these writeups!

Considering its placement on my top shows list, it would not be presumptuous to say I’m probably a fan of Madoka Magica. I’ve watched the show several times, and enjoyed it more each time; I’ve written a rambling essay on its film sequel that only touched on the things I loved about the show proper. It seems perhaps slightly unwise to jump from a project as ambitious as Hyouka right into something I’m as attached to as Madoka, but this whole Wrong Every Time experiment has been a series of unwise decisions, so here we are. Let’s get right into it.

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One Piece – Volume 3

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The battle between Luffy and Buggy’s pirates concludes in this volume, across a trio of chapters that basically split the difference between slapstick and traditional action. While Buggy came across as intimidating in the earlier Nami chapters, Luffy outclasses him pretty handily, and so any attempts at tension here are mostly about Buggy putting either Nami or Luffy’s hat in danger. Even Buggy’s special power no longer comes across as dangerous – it’s more a tool for slapstick, where Buggy’s ability to send his top half flying becomes a lot less powerful when Luffy can still kick his bottom half in the junk. Buggy’s power kinda sucks, but it sure is good for gags.

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ERASED – Episode 10

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Noooooo. Nooooooooo. Noooooo o o o o o ooo.

ERASED did it. It did the worst thing it could do, and it did it bad. Holy crap this episode. What a mess.

I’m so sad. This show was really good. Why would it do this.

noooooooo

review here, losing-it notes below

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Active Raid – Episode 10

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Active Raid had a uniquely disappointing episode this week, and that was pretty much the only unique thing about it. This was basically the platonic ideal of “phoning it in” – there was no personality or creativity in any element of this episode’s construction, it was just one hundred percent an episode designed to get the characters from one narrative point to a different one. I’m a character person, so I don’t generally watch the kinds of shows that traffic in nothing plot beats like this, so I guess that at least made it a somewhat novel experience for me? Crap episode, though. Real bad.

You can check my full thoughts on The Nothing over at ANN, or my notes below!

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