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.
Category Archives: Episode Writeup
ERASED – Episode 7
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!
Active Raid – Episode 7
Well, that was fast. After an unlikely episode that demonstrated Active Raid at its absolute best, we were back to the scrapheap this week, as the show rambled through what was almost certainly its worst episode so far. This episode was bad enough that I’m still not quite sure if it was intentionally bad – if the show has somehow realized its episodic drama could not be more emotionally or dramatically hollow, and is thus leaning into that in the most ridiculous way possible. But there were plenty of scenes here that basically had no purpose if you assume the show was trying to be funny, so no, this was just a really supremely terrible episode of anime.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Blast of Tempest – Episode 1
Blast of Tempest opens with three high school students – Aika, Yoshino, and Mashiro. Aika and Mashiro are siblings, and Aika seems to harbor some sort of resentment towards Yoshino. She immediately calls him a “con artist,” and then all three of them seem to turn to the same script, speaking of how “the time is out of joint.” Their dialect shifts from generic teenager to Shakespearian embellishment as the three alternate the final lines: “O, cursed spite. That ever I was born to set it right!”
Hyouka – Episode 17
The grand finale has arrived! We’re finally at the last episode of the school festival arc, the school festival arc to end all festival arcs, the arc pinpointing the anxieties of young identity and self-expectations by the studio best able to make those feelings real. The episode opens with the continuation of Chitanda’s climactic radio announcement, where she makes use of all the perhaps misguided advice Irisu has given her and all the confidence she’s gained over three days of propositioning people to ask the whole school for help in catching Juumoji, and also maybe selling a few anthologies.
Active Raid – Episode 6
Active Raid pulled off a pretty great episode this week, indulging in some classic giant robot love and putting the show’s themes to work. It was clearly a canned genre story, but there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as the ingredients are good and they’re mixed together well. And here, the archaic but compelling nature of giant robots fit perfectly into Active Raid’s usual mix of idealism and pragmatism, offering fun dramatic highlights and plenty of melancholy thoughts on dreams and aging. It wasn’t an overwhelmingly great episode or anything, but it was heartfelt and well-told. More of this please!
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode notes below.
ERASED – Episode 6
This week’s ERASED wasn’t a highlight, but it was still a strong episode, and perhaps most importantly it was the series’ most thematically cohesive episode yet. ERASED has been a show that more often than not rides wholly on execution to carry its general thriller narrative, but this episode connected Airi’s past to Satoru’s current circumstances and the overall climate of fear pervading this show, making a compellingly uncertain case for trust in the face of danger. In spite of being another outsourced one, this episode also worked well enough aesthetically – the red eyes remain a bit much, as I talk about in my review, but otherwise there was a solid sense of understated menace running through most of these scenes. ERASED is holding strong.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Hyouka – Episode 16
Episode sixteen opens with Satoshi prepping himself for his great mystery adventure. Having resolved last episode to finally come out ahead of Oreki for once, he arrives at the festival bright and early, only to see that the newspaper has already put out a call for any would-be detectives. Over at the current events club, where the next Juumaji theft is theoretically scheduled, the floor is lousy with self-confident schemers and bored sleuths. Satoshi is ready to shine in a way only he can; but then his annoying rival gets a call, and Satoshi learns he has once again been defeated. Shots are framed to avoid his face and emphasize his powerlessness, as his “that was pointless” echoes his feelings on the magic show fiasco. Satoshi may have finally decided he’s going to commit to something, but that doesn’t mean the world is willing to play along. Sometimes you just can’t win.
One Piece – Volume 2
With Zoro now on the team, One Piece’s second volume digs into a longer narrative on just one island, as Luffy and Zoro wander their way into the territory of Buggy the Clown. The first volume of One Piece was a collection of scattered small adventures, stories reflective of the clear Toriyama influence that still shows through in moments like the early dragon-ride coloring image. There’s still more of that here, from the wild expression work and character designs to the slapstick and word game silliness that flavors Buggy’s entrance. But we’re already stepping into longer narrative territory, and though One Piece is still a generally light and very readable production, it’s also starting to demonstrate some interesting thematic teeth.
Hyouka – Episode 15
With the over-the-top cooking competition over, you might think Hyouka would tune its energy level down to something approaching the regular level. Well, Hyouka is going to have none of that – this fifteenth episode is just as self-consciously dramatic as anything else the show has done, exploding with dynamic poses and wild angles and unexpected fantasies. With the show focus expanding far beyond Oreki, the storytelling moves outside of his monotone affectation as well, expressing the worlds of Chitanda, Mayaka, and Satoshi in their own brilliant purples and oranges and greys. It’s an affectation fitting for this arc’s new focus – with the thief Juumoji now having declared his intentions and laid out his modus operandi, Hyouka is turning towards its first self-conscious, overtly fiendish, catch-me-if-you-can mystery caper. Magic acts and phantom thieves and heated negotiations form the narrative bulwarks of an episode packed with more drama than the show’s ever seen.