Back to Silent Voice, which mercifully got a lot less consistently depressing in this second volume! Fortunately the character work stayed just as strong, making this easily one of the most engaging dramas I’ve checked out recently. Strong art, very strong writing, lots of nice background details… just a whole lot to enjoy in Silent Voice. It’s gonna be tough waiting for each volume to get released now.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or read my notes below!
Gatchaman Crowds pulled a bunch of threads together this week in an episode that I felt had maybe the season’s first real missteps. The main issue was the handling of Rui’s arc – having X just talk Rui into feeling motivated again just felt way too simple, and Rui’s story felt poorly integrated with everything else that was going on. It made me think the story just kind of didn’t know what to do with Rui for a while, which is a disappointing thought. But there was also a whole bunch of great stuff in this episode, with my favorite parts concentrated in Millione and Rizumu’s choices. The two of them actually seem pretty alike in their assessment of humanity, but Millione embraces going with the flow for ratings, while Rizumu just uses it to make himself feel powerful. Cool guys, cool guys.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Classroom Crisis is back! After two straight episodes of tedious and emotionally sterile boardroom shenanigans, Classroom Crisis finally returned to what it’s actually good at – demonstrating remarkable humanity in the conversations between its lead characters. And jeez, was this episode’s big conversation ever a stunner. The cathartic reunion between Nagisa and Mizuki here honestly justifies the series for me pretty much single-handedly. Satisfying romance is one of those mystical white elephants of anime storytelling, and these two have all kinds of character-coherent and endearing chemistry. Couple that with the dramatic stakes of Nagisa being at his lowest point and Mizuki dragging him out of it, and you’ve got a scene that will pretty much permanently endear me to this series regardless of all its other (numerous) failings. Scenes like this are what I’m in fiction for – I built my first novel around a scene that was basically exactly like this, and I will probably be always be a sucker for “I know things are bad, but god damnit, I care about you. We can get through this together.” Nice work, Classroom Crisis. You got me.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Yep, reviewing more Bride’s Story. It’s nice to have more good manga to return to, so I’m trying to build up a bit of a stable of properties – Genshiken, Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer, etc. This volume was classic Bride’s Story, returning from the high drama of volume three and comedy of volume four to the mellow slice of life that’s the story’s bread and butter. It’s where the manga feels most comfortable, but I honestly wouldn’t mind a bit more direction in the storytelling – but either way, Bride’s Story is an excellent manga with plentiful strengths, and they’re fully on display in this volume.
You can check out my full review over at ANN!
Wednesday has come again, and with it, one more scraping collection of show reflection fragments pulled together out of my paltry watch schedule. Fortunately, this week I was able to supplement my bare-minimum weekly viewings with a big ol’ ten-inch steak of anime. This week I watched basically the entirety of The Idolmaster!
But before we get to that, let’s run down the usual suspects, whose episodes this week ended up being well…. kinda suspect. But hey, at least the bad shows had good episodes!
Hey guys! The first let’s plays by me and my friends are finally up! We had some initial technical issues getting it all together, but things should hopefully be much more consistent going forward. We started off this week with some Metal Gear Solid, the hot new game everyone’s talking about, and we… well, almost got through the intro cutscene. Look, it’s Metal Gear, these things happen. We’ll hopefully be back again in a couple days with more videos, and until then, you can check out all our stuff so far on youtube!
You can check out our existing videos here:
If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to let me know either here, on ask.fm, or even on youtube (youtube comments, god forbid). We’re just starting out, so I’m sure there’ll be stuff to adjust as we go along. And I hope you enjoy!
We got another lighthearted episode of Paranoia Agent this week, though this one unfortunately wasn’t nearly as strong as the last. In fact, this was likely the weakest episode of the show so far – composed around a fairly weak structural conceit and full of stories that didn’t really amount to much, it clocked in a fair degree below the level of quality the show has set for itself. It did have its moments though, and I’ve heard the next couple episodes are excellent, so I’m not worried. They can’t all be winners.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Back to the manga pile, this time for something a little outside of my usual fare. My Hero Academia is textbook Shonen Jump, but I can dig that if it’s executed well, and this one’s very polished. It’s extremely readable, the premise offers lots of fun character-design potential, and the art is excellent. I’m guessing/hoping it’ll gain a bit more personality as it goes along, but it’s also just nice to have a more diverse selection of manga to be keeping an active eye on. I’ll be sticking with this one.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
SHIT IS FUCKED. Things are a total mess in Gatchamanland, and it will take more than Hajime wearing cute pigtails to sort all of this out. This was another solid episode in a very impressive sequel, and one that made me feel frankly a little awkward to cover, considering how charged the topics it’s dealing with are. Gatchaman is hot-off-the-presses commentary, its thoughts on the dangers of groupthink in more harmony-focused Japan equally relevant to modern online discourse. These conversations have essentially been turned radioactive by recent controversies – there are people looking to start witch hunts all over, and gamergate lurking in the background, eager to either pounce on targets or seize on comments as vindication of their pet issues. It is awesome that Gatchaman Crowds is so relevant to what’s going on this very second, but I sure hope writing these posts doesn’t get me killed.
You can check out my megasized writeup over at ANN, or my notes below!
This week’s Classroom Crisis was… an episode. For the second week straight, the show focused largely on Nagisa’s political dealings within the Kirishina Corporation, and for the second week straight, those dealings failed to have basically any emotional grounding or sense of coherent internal drama. Nagisa’s stuff here is really just “stuff happening” – it all exists to the side of the conflicts that either have some earned emotional weight or drive at the contrast between pragmatism and idealism (which is a conflict that’s itself largely confined to the conversations between Kaito and Nagisa, since the actual political stuff is way too simplistic to carry much meaning). This episode had one great conversation between Iris and Mizuki that reflected what the show is actually good at, but aside from that, this was a dreary wash.
But anyway. You can check out my breakdown over at ANN, or my notes below!