Author Archives: Bobduh

Active Raid – Episode 8

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Active Raid drifted back into the good lane this week, pulling off an episode that starred an understandable conflict that built off the show’s core political themes and also illustrated new things about the main characters. And hey, waddayaknow, just executing on those obvious storytelling fundamentals resulted in a much better story than the episodes that are about basically nothing. It seems weird to be offering criticism that boils down to “stop making bad decisions, instead try making good ones,” but that really does seem to be what it sometimes takes. Active Raid made good decisions this week, and was rewarded with a satisfying episode for it.

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

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Hyouka – Episode 19

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Hyouka’s eighteenth episode made explicit the distance Oreki and Chitanda have moved towards each other, and brought them even closer together over the course of a mystery investigation that might as well have also been a date. By the end of that episode, Oreki’s classic blushes at being caught by Chitanda’s stare were matched by Chitanda’s own feelings, as she found herself struck by new emotions she couldn’t really describe. Relationships have shifted slowly across the course of this series, but at this point, Oreki and Chitanda are so close together their noses are already touching.

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Winter 2016 – Week 7 in Review

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This week in anime was a week in anime. We’re entering that stretch of the season where shows often become kinda tough to write about – they’ve established a firm rhythm and personality at this point, but they’re not quite into the leadup to the climax, and so episodes can oftentimes just be described as “pretty much like the last episode, I guess.” Even a show like Konosuba, one of this season’s most inconsistent wildcards, is now at least becoming steady in its inconsistency. There were some slight dips and slight rises among individual shows, but everything is at the moment falling within the margin of error of its existing expectations. That doesn’t mean things are impossible to talk about – that just means I have to work harder to find good points of interest. So sit there and appreciate my hard work as I run this week down!

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UQ Holder, Volume 3 – Review

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The UQ Holder reviews continue, through a volume that… still isn’t particularly good. There’s plenty of spectacle here, but not much reason to care – the manga’s characters are still pretty one-note, and there are no tangible stakes in most of these fights. Writing a manga about immortal characters who already start the series with incredible powers is a pretty tall order, and it feels like Akamatsu still hasn’t quite figured out how to make that interesting. Fortunately, having read further ahead of this myself, I can say there is hope on the horizon! Three lousy volumes is a harsh way to start a series, but it turns out Akamatsu does have some good ideas hiding in here after all. Just gotta soldier through.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my frankly pretty limited chapter notes below.

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Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works, Part Two – Review

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Well, I’m sure you knew it was coming. I reviewed the first half about a year ago, and now that the second half’s blurays have finally come out, it’s time to go once more into the breach. I actually really enjoyed UBW’s first half, even if I already felt its writing was somewhat dragging down its fantasy-action appeal. But here in the second half, the turgid writing pretty much wholly sinks the production, resulting in one of the least compelling shows I’ve watched in recent memory. UBW’s second half is a mess, and it’s a shame, because there really are some nice fundamental ideas in there. Ah well.

You can check out my full review over at ANN!

Unlimited Blade Works

Missed Chances in Colorful

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I really, really wish Colorful were a better movie than it is. The kind of movie that Colorful is trying to be is a great idea – a painful, intimate portrait of depression, where any slight hints of the supernatural are really just there to better illustrate the context of the protagonist’s life. A movie that fully embodies the mindset of feeling divorced from happiness, and the reality of an unhappy adolescence. Colorful works somewhat better in retrospect, but even looking back on its trials, it’s a messy, awkward movie, one too caught up in its own bitterness and too hamstrung by its conceit to really invite the audience in. But it certainly tries to be something.

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Shirobako, Part One – Review

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Aw hell yeah I’m reviewing Shirobako. I’ve talked about Shirobako repeatedly and at length, but that’s no reason not to spend more time repping the best show of 2015. Shirobako remains just as compelling on my third watch, and it’s actually even more satisfying to see the initial circumstances and relationships of the characters before they evolve over time. Shirobako is funny and propulsive and endearing and heartbreaking, a show that’s surprisingly moving for how easy it is to watch. Considering what huge successes both Shirobako and Girls und Panzer turned out to be, I really hope Mizushima has many more originals coming down the line.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or the notes for the five episodes I watched before switching to full marathon mode below!

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Dagashi Kashi – Episode 6

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Dagashi Kashi continued on its merry way this week, pulling off another episode that was far from laugh-out-loud funny, but also plenty endearing regardless. I like this cast, it’s nice spending time with them, that’s pretty much all I need from this show. I’m glad the show generally sticks to jokes that actually respect each of them as people, and I think its way of weaving small bits of characterization into larger comic bits is actually pretty graceful. It’s an easy show to watch, and that’s pretty much all I ask of it.

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

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Hyouka – Episode 18

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The school festival has ended, with half of Hyouka’s characters left at their most tense and unhappy moments so far. Satoshi has attempted to match Oreki and failed, ultimately validating his own lack of confidence. And though Mayaka is trying to reach out to Satoshi, she’s also left with feelings of inadequacy – not only can she not help the boy she cares about, but her passion for manga has been rewarded with the knowledge that even those far better than her feel like failures in their own eyes. Given all these sad, climactic character shifts, you might expect Hyouka to now start ramping up towards some final, cathartic revelations.

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ERASED – Episode 7

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ERASED is back in action. After a couple of outsourced episodes that saw the show falling into “solid but unremarkable thriller” territory, this one brought the show home both in terms of staff and quality. Satoru’s childhood material is just inherently more compelling in its mood and genre space than his adult stuff, but on top of that, this episode was also full of great individual shots and a wide variety of clever cuts. ERASED’s best episodes capture a sense of nostalgia that feels far more true-to-life than the adolescent nostalgia that is anime’s usual stock-in-trade. You can really feel the crisp February air in this show, or smell the melting snow. Its aesthetic strengths are what raise it above genre territory, and I really hope they hold strong to the end.

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

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