My Eureka Seven watch continues, now complete with a bunch of stray thoughts and idle speculations! The show is still sticking in a very consistent genre space so far, and Renton honestly isn’t feeling like the most likable protagonist at the moment, but it’s still an eminently watchable show. Clean art style, solid direction, and each episode moves things forward to some extent. I’m guessing the show will slow down a bit for more “Renton getting used to the Gekkostate” stuff before any of the ominous military issues being hinted at come to the forefront, but everyone keeps telling me it gets better, so I’m going to assume I’m not being rused. Let’s take a journey back through episodes two through four!
Category Archives: Episode Writeup
ERASED – Episode 8
Looks like ERASED may truly be out of the woods at this point. Not only was this episode very strong, but it was strong in a way the show hasn’t consistently been, and really needed to express more of. This episode was understated and warm, focused largely on articulating the specificity of Hinazuki’s feelings, and it went a very long way towards giving the show a necessary emotional grounding. Satoru’s an alright character, but he can often feel more like the protagonist of a genre vehicle than an individual; he’s goal-oriented in a way that makes him feel too much like a narrative force. But Hinazuki is a person with a variety of feelings, and this episode gave her a chance to express them. I really enjoyed this one, and I hope the show stays at least close to this strong through the end.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Active Raid – Episode 8
Active Raid drifted back into the good lane this week, pulling off an episode that starred an understandable conflict that built off the show’s core political themes and also illustrated new things about the main characters. And hey, waddayaknow, just executing on those obvious storytelling fundamentals resulted in a much better story than the episodes that are about basically nothing. It seems weird to be offering criticism that boils down to “stop making bad decisions, instead try making good ones,” but that really does seem to be what it sometimes takes. Active Raid made good decisions this week, and was rewarded with a satisfying episode for it.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Hyouka – Episode 19
Hyouka’s eighteenth episode made explicit the distance Oreki and Chitanda have moved towards each other, and brought them even closer together over the course of a mystery investigation that might as well have also been a date. By the end of that episode, Oreki’s classic blushes at being caught by Chitanda’s stare were matched by Chitanda’s own feelings, as she found herself struck by new emotions she couldn’t really describe. Relationships have shifted slowly across the course of this series, but at this point, Oreki and Chitanda are so close together their noses are already touching.
Dagashi Kashi – Episode 6
Dagashi Kashi continued on its merry way this week, pulling off another episode that was far from laugh-out-loud funny, but also plenty endearing regardless. I like this cast, it’s nice spending time with them, that’s pretty much all I need from this show. I’m glad the show generally sticks to jokes that actually respect each of them as people, and I think its way of weaving small bits of characterization into larger comic bits is actually pretty graceful. It’s an easy show to watch, and that’s pretty much all I ask of it.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode notes below!
Hyouka – Episode 18
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.
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.