Category Archives: Episode Writeup

Orange – Episodes 1-3

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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.

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Wandering Son – Episode 3

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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.

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Planetarian – Episodes 1-2

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I’m really enjoying Planetarian so far. As I say in my review, I appreciate a show whose storytelling tightly matches the scope of its premise – there’s a whole world being implied here, but Planetarian has one very specific story to tell. Yumemi’s character manages to thread a difficult path between inert cliche and maudlin overselling, coming across like a sympathetic person without the show having to harp on the tragedy of her situation. I’d love to see more small dramas like this; the 12 or 13 episode season can often result in unfocused narratives, but five episodes is a very manageable amount of time.

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

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The Tatami Galaxy – Episode 1

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Oof, you guys really chose a brutal one this time. The Tatami Galaxy is one of the most rich and dense anime out there, spectacular in terms of visuals and nearly as impressive in terms of storytelling. It’s likely Masaaki Yuasa’s best work to date, and Yuasa is easily one of the strongest candidates for “best currently working director.” Even just its first episode is absolute madness, a madcap, stream-of-consciousness narrator accompanied by wild, spiraling visuals. The Tatami Galaxy is one of the few shows that starts with a high “difficulty level,” meaning it’s not just hard to comprehend, but even just keeping up with its subtitles demands a high speed-reading fluency. Even just the pre-OP sequence could warrant a page or two of unpacking.

So let’s do exactly that.

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Hunter x Hunter – Volume 33

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It’s almost painful to read these chapters, knowing how close I am to the current stopping point, knowing how uncertain it is this arc will ever be concluded. So much of this reads like a fantasy dreamland idea of a Hunter x Hunter arc. Kurapika and Leorio are back, and they’re both relevant! Ging and Pariston are dueling on the sidelines! Biscuit and Cheadle are there too! It’s all too much happiness for one Hunter x Hunter fan to take in – the joy tempered by the cruel fact of Togashi’s terribly uneven health. I hope he finds some rest for his own sake. I can live with just these treasures.

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Planetes – Episode 7

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As Planetes’ seventh episode begins, Hachi explains how the moon is often used as a place of recuperation for those suffering from the effects of long-term space habitation. With his leg still broken from his prior adventures, Hachi has plenty of time with his own thoughts this week, and so we hear his internal voice for the very first time. Hachi meets a pair of new acquaintances during his time recovering, as well – an old astronaut named Harry Roland, who spent twenty years in space carving the way for the current era, and a young woman named Nono, who claims to have been on the moon for twelve years. Both of these are dramatic stretches of time; the human body isn’t naturally suited for space travel, and so both Harry and Nono are something of space oddities, stranded from humanity’s terrestrial home.

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Wandering Son – Episode 2

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Halfway through this episode, Nitori arrives at her sister’s classroom in order to drop off a lunchbox. Her sister’s classmates stare at Nitori, noting how she’s cute and “looks like a girl,” and Nitori actually blushes in happiness at this. But Nitori’s sister is not impressed – she pushes Nitori out and then stomps to her desk. “Don’t take it out on your lunch,” a male friend gently chides her, at which Nitori’s sister only scowls, and then slams her lunch repeatedly into the table.

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Nana – Episode 2

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God damnit Nana.

That’s pretty much the plot of Nana’s second episode. We’re in flashback territory now, as we learn about the end of Nana’s high school life and the beginning of her time at art school. She falls in love, is rejected, falls in love, is ignored, falls in love, is forgotten, and finally falls in love with someone who’s actually interested in her. Unfortunately, her eventual “boyfriend’s” interest is of a pretty limited and predatory type – the man she falls for is married, and he is only willing to meet with her for sex a few times a month. Nana is being used, but as a naive and love-struck high school student, she doesn’t have much recourse.

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Yuureitou – Volume 2

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“They say her voice was as beautiful as that of a goddess.” That’s one of the few things Amano learns about Rika, the woman who supposedly tied her own stepmother to the clock’s face. What would lead a person to do that, and what her own thoughts might have been… all of this can only be inferred, refracted through secondary sources with their own ambiguous motives. All pictures of her were burned, and now she exists only as a distant wraith in the background of a single photo, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of feminine hysteria.

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Planetes – Episode 6

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In today’s episode of Planetes, Hachi and Tanabe arrive at the moon only to discover it’s full of weebs.

I mentioned in my last writeup that I was fairly, but not one hundred percent sure Planetes was in on the joke. That episode was silly, but it still conformed to something resembling a conventional narrative shell. Some of its camp was clearly intentional, but the underlying humor of the contrived story didn’t have to be. It might have just been an unintentionally funny episode.

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