Madoka Magica’s third episode opens with the reveal of Sayaka’s secret treasure, the one thing she might be willing to die for. Sayaka is a strong-willed and driven person, but Sayaka is also a teenager, and her secret reflects that; it’s a boy she happens to like. The late afternoon light sets a melancholy tone as we’re introduced to Sayaka’s crush, a boy who keeps smiling even though he’s bedridden, who turns away when he has to cry. It’s a very efficient bit of storytelling, and one more example of how Madoka embraces narrative minimalism and inference to make the most of its running time. We just get a brief conversation detailing the tone of their relationship, and then Sayaka’s “gift” sends her back into a memory, where she sees the passionate boy who inspired her love. Her gift is as cruel as Kyubey’s, and her revery seems like Madoka’s simplistic idealization of Mami; with a cut to her crush’s tears and then his crippled arm, we see that his smile is a mask. A destructive little tragedy in a minute and a half.
Category Archives: Episode Writeup
ERASED – Episode 12
ERASED finished with the remains of its dignity intact, forcing us to survive through just one final scene with Satoru’s supervillain nemesis before heading towards the end. Most of the show’s thematic threads were at least nodded to here, and there were a number of pretty scenes to counterbalance the weight of Yashiro’s ridiculousness. The show fell apart fairly close to the end, so it’s kind of ending on a low note, but in retrospect it’s obviously a reasonable production – it just hit its highs very early and its lows very late. In the end, the biggest lesson I find myself drawing from ERASED is to stop letting myself trust fans of source material. The fans always lie!
You can check out my review over at ANN, or my episode notes below.
Active Raid – Episode 12
Active Raid is over! The show ended about as well as it could have – that is, it’s a mediocre show that will be forgotten in a week or two, but it tied its threads together and concluded with relative grace. The ultimate reveal of Mythos’ motivation was as underwhelming as you’d expect, but Mythos has always been the show’s weakest element, so what are you gonna do. I liked the banter between the Unit 8 leads, having that friggin’ Clippy app actually be evil was perfect, and the last fight was pretty okay. Not much point in yelling at a show for not being a very different one.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
A Girl on the Shore – Part One
“We used to wait / We used waste hours just walkin’ around / We used to wait / All those wasted lives in the wilderness downtown.”
Inio Asano certainly has a way with words. Or it might be better to say he has no way with them. His stories seem translucent, any wisp of authorial voice appearing only in the fringes of unvarnished naturalism. He gives his characters’ interiority the drama they believe it deserves, but any magic in his stories is the magic of the world as it is. Characters interrupt each other and start again, tossing out simple observations and losing their trains of thought. You can feel the wind blowing between the staggered refrains of his mixed-up kids.
Dagashi Kashi – Episode 10
Dagashi Kashi pulled off a strong episode this week, sticking largely to its slice of life comfort zone while also peppering its one core concept with lots of nice incidental gags. There were good Hotaru faces and nice interactions between the friends and plenty of dagashi shenanigans to be had. Dagashi Kashi doesn’t have to be flashy to succeed, and when it does work, it’s a very likable show. It’s not going to win any awards or break any hearts, but it’s a fun series that I’ve enjoyed my time with.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Puella Magi Madoka Magica – Episode 2
Madoka Magica slows down in its second episode, as all that exposition stuff the first one avoided gets woven in with our formal introduction to Kyubey and Mami Tomoe. The episode is less overtly thrilling until its (tiro) finale, but that’s partially the point. There are consistent repeated shots and sequences here, from the moment Madoka turns before “waking up” to the various shots and full scenes used to represent her daily life. The show is establishing an initial sense of normalcy, and beyond that, how Madoka feels about her normalcy. This is a safe, pleasant, and relatively empty world – a world that demands little, but doesn’t offer Madoka much of an identity.
Dagashi Kashi – Episode 9
Editor: Woops! I apparently forgot to post this last week, so here it is.
And making it an even three for three, this week’s third episodic review show also had a pretty lousy episode. This one was lousy in a way I’ve come to expect from Dagashi Kashi, though – it tried to be funny the whole time, and Dagashi Kashi isn’t particularly funny, and so that didn’t turn out well. The show stretched what were essentially four simple jokes out across the four segments that composed the episode, making me feel as exhausted as Kokonotsu by the end. It’s kind of unfortunate when a show is so totally confident in a strength it just doesn’t possess.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Active Raid – Episode 11
Active Raid had a relatively successful but also kinda bland episode this week, moving its pieces towards the end without much flair or energy. But that’s kind of the deal here – Active Raid has very rarely been an actually good show, it’s basically always just been a reasonably competent one. I never mind watching it, but also never feel legitimately invested in it. The giant robot episode was quite good, most of Rin’s material has been excellent, and that episode focused on Miho was also solid – outside of that, it’s just kind of a thing you can watch. Hopefully next season offers enough legitimately strong contenders that something like Active Raid’s bare competence wouldn’t put it near the top of the pack.
You can check out my full review over at ANN. No notes this time, I just watched this episode straight through!
ERASED – Episode 11
ERASED was definitely much better this week, though a performance like last episode isn’t something a show can really recover from. I get into it in my review, but ultimately, it feels like ERASED would have been better off just not having a serial killer at all. The cat and mouse stuff in both timelines is almost uniformly worse than the rest of the show’s material, and the show doesn’t actually need a killer for this story to work. But either way, this episode was relatively low-key and full of nice character moments, so it falls in the good column even if it also included a speech about murdering hamsters. You take what you can get.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Garzey’s Wing – Episode 1
Why. Why would you have me watch this. What are you trying to prove.
I sit down after having watched the first episode of Garzey’s Wing and think “how should I write about this, in a tactical sense?” Not in the sense that I’m having difficulty thinking of an angle to take it from – in the sense that I want to write a piece that is just funny enough so that you people feel you’ve gotten your money’s worth, while not funny enough to tempt any of you assholes to pay for another one. This show is terrible.