Author Archives: Bobduh

A Bride’s Story – Volume 6

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And we’re back on the manga train, with the second-to-newest installment of one of the many excellent series I’ve been covering. This volume of Bride’s Story applied all the manga’s usual strengths to exactly the kind of dramatic peaks I’d been hoping for, and the results were absolutely spectacular. The hardest part of reviewing this volume was trying to think of something bad to say, and in the end I just couldn’t. This volume was basically perfect, and certainly one of the single most beautiful volumes of manga I’ve ever read. Great work, Kaoru Mori.

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

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The Perfect Insider – Episode 9

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The Perfect Insider had a fine episode this week, though not a spectacular one. Some of that admittedly comes down to storytelling preference – while I was all about the evocative flashbacks and nice character moments of the last two weeks, an episode wholly focused on mystery plot is almost guaranteed not to thrill me. But even though this mystery is completely ridiculous, this episode had solid pacing and enough coherent reveals to keep things interesting. Plus reviewing it gave me a chance to talk about mystery storytelling in general, which is always fun

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

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Beautiful Bones – Episode 9

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This week’s Beautiful Bones was really solid! I know, I’m surprised too. But it seems like whenever the show is able to slow down on the overt mystery plot, it does a much better job of making its characters feel like people. That’s what elevated the first half of the Cursed Man arc, and it’s certainly what worked here. Instead of being preoccupied with establishing a bunch of new mystery variables, this one focused on two tiny linked mysteries that were really just avenues to discuss the various characters’ feelings on love and loss. It was understated and thoughtful and just pretty strong all around. Nice work, Beautiful Bones.

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

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Strike Witches – Episode 1

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You guys are assholes.

I hope you know that. I open up my viewing schedule for anything you all want to support, and what happens? You fund The Room and God Damn Strike Witches. I hope you’re proud of yourselves. You got me to watch Strike Witches. You got me to make despairing jokes on twitter about Strike Witches. The first episode of Strike Witches now exists in my past. When Saint Peter scans down my MAL at the pearly gates, he’ll take a momentary pause at the S section, glance at me with one raised eyebrow, and then continue without a word.

So, how was the first episode of Strike Witches?

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What Makes Kyoto Animation So Special?

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I wrote another big article for ANN! This one’s about KyoAni! I’m super excited about it! I am guessing that is obvious!

I took a lot of time on this one, and am very happy I was able to segue directly from watching all of K-On! into getting to work on it. Kyoto Animation do wonderful work, and it’s nice to be able to celebrate that so directly. I hope you enjoy the piece!

What Makes Kyoto Animation So Special?

Chuunibyou

Fall 2015 – Week 9 in Review

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This week in anime was really good! Super good, in fact! It wasn’t just held up by one or two shows – almost every show I’m watching (aside from Beautiful Bones, but that doesn’t really count) either held strong or pulled off one of its best episodes, and a bunch of these episodes even demonstrated strengths their shows hadn’t previously exhibited. The Perfect Insider was full of strong character moments, Owarimonogatari returned to the beautiful art designs of arcs long past, and One Punch Man succeeded not just as an animation showcase, but as an emotional drama. I’ve got all sorts of good things to say about these episodes, so let’s get right to it and RUN ‘EM DOWN!

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Casshern Sins – Episode 3

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The third Casshern Sins contained a slower, smaller story than the second, more reminiscent of the first episode’s long walk on the beach. Though it wasn’t as rich in character or narrative, it did fill in gaps in the story so far; Casshern met his first human, and that experience lent a necessary warmth to counterbalance the show’s usual solemnity. We’re still wandering through archetypal vignettes in a desolate wasteland, but Casshern’s cumulative experiences are slowly building him into a person worth following on this journey.

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Winter 2016 Season Preview

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We’re approaching the last act of the fall season, which means it’s time once again to shift an eye towards winter and see what the future might bring. This winter season is not looking good, frankly – there are basically no shows I have strong confidence in, and even the potential hits are pretty sparse. But every season has its surprises, and it’d be hard for a season to be as barren as this past summer anyway, so I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end. Winter seasons are historically pretty lousy, anyway; last winter was a fantastic outlier, but with nothing like Shirobako carrying over and nothing as promising as Death Parade or Yurikuma awaiting us, we’re going to have to forage our way through the lean months. Check out your backlog, finish shows you fell behind on, and maybe spare a minute or two to check in on a few of these potential titles

As usual, I won’t be running down every upcoming title here – you can read synopses as well as I can, and there’s only so much I can say about Crappy Light Novel Adaptation #375. You can check out the full list over at anichart, but I’m just going to be hitting the stuff that actually looks interesting to me, and explaining why. Let’s get right to it!

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Casshern Sins – Episode 2

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In my first writeup on Casshern Sins, I worried that the show’s distant and deliberately mythic tone might prevent it from succeeding on a personal, emotional level. That issue remains a possibility, but this episode certainly didn’t reflect it; it was sad and intimate and remarkably successful, maintaining the sense of inevitability the show consistently demonstrates while offering up enough personal moments to make the Ruin succeed as small-scale tragedy. Things are still progressing as an intentionally archetypal epic story, but intimacy of telling and strong execution could make that work as well here as it does in something like Madoka Magica.

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Owarimonogatari – Episode 9

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Monogatari returned to top-tier form this week, with an episode whose visual theatrics were somewhat reminiscent of Shinobu Time’s gorgeous full-episode tapestry. And in fact, the visual tricks here were even more diverse than that, with shots mirroring that tapestry sharing space with some cut-paper images, creepy black and white interpretive shots, and great visual compositions done in Monogatari’s house style. Plus this episode featured a mix of Araragi and Shinobu bantering and Gaen just totally dominating everybody, so the narrative end was solid too. We’re not really in anything approaching the emotional turmoil of Sodachi’s material, but this was a fantastic episode on the visual end, and that’s more than enough to satisfy me for now. It even ended with a genuinely thrilling cliffhanger, implying a number of eerie possibilities regarding the nature of Shinobu’s old friend. We’ll have to see where it goes from here.

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

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