Category Archives: Episode Writeup

Flying Witch – Episodes 11-12

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Flying Witch concluded with a double dose of warm fuzzies this week, featuring flying whales and new robes and lots of delicious hotcakes. The flying whale was easily one of the show’s most overtly magical moments, but basically everything here was top shelf Flying Witch. Now that the show is over, I realize I was kind of taking Flying Witch for granted – the show was uniformly excellent, it legitimately made my week a little brighter, and it feels like these stories could go on forever. I’m really gonna miss this one.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode 11 notes below (I moved to the couch for 12 and didn’t take notes, which seems pretty Flying Witch to me).

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Kiznaiver – Episode 12

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Kiznaiver ended on a fairly reasonable episode, all told. The introduction of Sonozaki’s crusade frankly could have done a lot more narrative damage than it did – in the end, this episode actually went a long way towards humanizing someone who’d been the show’s worst major character. And everybody else got a sprinkling of great moments, so I can’t really complain. Uneven as it was, there was still a whole lot to enjoy in this show.

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

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Mawaru Penguindrum – Episode 3

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Today is Curry Day! That most inclusive and all-purpose of meals, a general dish that can be suited to all palettes, perfect for enjoyment with friends and family. As Penguindrum #3 opens, we hear Ringo’s happy memories of curry with her parents, as her room is framed like some underwater treasure chamber. The Takakura siblings don’t have much, but they have each other – their family is happy, even if its fate is unclear. Ringo is very sure of her fate, but it seems like all she wants is a happy family.

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Wandering Son – Episode 1

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If I were to describe Wandering Son’s aesthetic in a word, it would likely be “gentle.” The color palette is light pastels, painted gracefully with an uneven color density, as if the moving images are a series of watercolors. The character designs are rounded and attractive without moving into the deeply stylized; their loose shapes and curved faces lean towards a kind of universal androgyny. Those designs are offset by light touches of pure white, an inlay just inside of their outline that makes for characters who seem constantly lit by sunlight and also just slightly removed from their environment, like cut paper actors.

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Planetes – Episode 5

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This was a very silly episode of Planetes. How silly? Well, a running subplot involves an amateur film production of “Space Wolf Goes to the Moon,” a pickpocket at one point laments that his “nimble pianist’s fingers are only used to steal other people’s stuff,” and the climactic scene involves a pair of parents verbally underlining the lesson they’ve learned about parenting, each gasping, and then turning to stare at each other, their eyes filled with daytime soap opera wonder. Planetes can be a hammy and broad show at the best of times, but this episode pretty much reveled in a kind of archetypal TV storytelling that reminded me more of something like M.A.S.H. or the A-Team than anything anime genres approach. And for all that, it was a really good time.

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Kiznaiver – Episode 11

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Kiznaiver had another fairly strong episode this week, one that again demonstrated how this show is often much better at its small emotional and framing details than it is at the big narrative strokes. I frankly don’t care much about Sonozaki’s attempted coup here – it’s an okay place to take her sense of isolation, but it’s only going to get interesting once Katsuhira attempts to talk her down. It’s that communication that always becomes the key, and the way this fantastic director elevates such small moments into high drama. Chidori keeping a brace face on the phone, or Katsuhira admitting he’s not necessarily confident in his answers. Little gems all around.

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

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The Lost Village – Episode 12

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All great things must come to an end. All relentlessly weird things too, for that matter, and so we must at last bid The Lost Village adieu. I was surprised by this show plenty of times, but it ultimately developed its own strange kind of consistent rhythm. It was funny and ridiculous and regularly charming, an unexpected slice of the kind of comedy you almost never see in anime. I think this show’s creators had a lot of fun making it. I certainly had plenty of fun watching.

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

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Mawaru Penguindrum – Episode 2

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Penguindrum’s second episode is a much easier twenty minutes than the first. Not only is it more of a fun, propulsive adventure than a tragic drama, it’s also just much less dense, more or less sticking to one straightforward narrative. The brothers must find the Penguindrum, and the Penguindrum is in the possession of Ringo Oginome… probably. And so they head off, tailing Ringo (a girl whose name is literally “apple”) as she goes about her fairly unusual day.

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One Piece – Volume 9

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One Piece’s ninth volume is titled simply “Tears.” It’s a thematically relevant choice, but it’s also about as clear an indication as you could hope for of the emotional trials to come. This volume is a harrowing journey, featuring One Piece’s greatest moments of character writing and most cathartic points of high drama so far. It’s an easy peak for the manga, a dramatic accomplishment any story would be proud of.

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Planetes – Episode 4

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Today’s Planetes episode was about how rich people are terrible and should probably be killed.

Well, there was a little more to it than that, but not much. This was one more classic office storyline, the episode where the head office’s son visits the branch and everyone has to kowtow and dance for him because nepotism is awesome. It’s a standard plot shell that was executed in a pretty routine manner – we learned that Hachi and the Control employee Claire were once an item, and Tanabe’s ultimate defense of the debris unit earned her some clearly plotted respect from Hachi, but in the end, this is the kind of episode you could see in basically any episodic drama or sitcom.

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