Oh jeez Parasyte had a great episode big woop snore. This episode had tons of great small sequences and was smart as fuck, so there’s only really the one awkward thing to talk about – the music. I didn’t have much of a problem with it in the first three episodes, but it felt particularly obnoxious this week – the first fight and the dramatic music used for Ryoko’s scene with Shinichi were particularly poorly scored. The show’s still great though, so eh, I’ll live.
I actually liked this one! It wasn’t, you know, mindblowing or anything, but it moved well, had some great fight animation, and the jokes actually landed for me. This one gets to join Sinon’s introduction and the last episode of GGO in the “maybe you’re not so bad after all, SAO” pile.
We apparently entered some kind of localized reality inverter this week, as absolutely nothing happened in Log Horizon while Sword Art Online was actually a bunch of fun. Bow before my ability to spin entire articles out of “this week, nothing happened.” BOW.
My catch-up article on Parasyte is posted, where I scratch at a few of the things that make this show so damn engaging. It’ll be nice to actually get to dig into a show with some thematic richness on ANN – I did that somewhat last season as well, but nobody was actually watching Shounen Hollywood and very few of Barakamon/SAO’s fans seemed interested in that stuff, so this might be the first time this stuff is actually welcome. Hurray!
And Sword Art Online returns. My post on ANN is relatively polite about this episode – it’s slow and boring and basically meaningless, but I keep it civil. To get the real story of my thoughts on this episode, you really have to head to twitter. So let’s actually run this episode down:
Fall’s first ANN episode post is up! Starting off with Log Horizon, where in this week’s post I mainly focus on the conscience choices Log Horizon makes to sacrifice grace for clarity. It’s an interesting choice – most shows (well, most decent shows) aren’t nearly as bold as Log Horizon in overtly infodumping at their audience, but in this case, it actually feeds directly into the show’s strengths. Log Horizon wants you to understand exactly what is going on, and goddamnit it’s gonna sit you down and explain some shit if it has to!
Management: Yeah, I’m aware episode 3 is out. This is the writeup I wrote just in case G Reco got picked up for streaming – but the preview guide’s over now, so I figured you guys might appreciate my thoughts anyway. Complete with ANN scoring and everything!
Rating: 3
I have very, very strange feelings about these first two episodes. On paper, they did a bunch of the standard things mecha shows like this tend to. We started off with an upbeat, overachieving protagonist, Bellri, out on a space elevator ride when a space pirate attacks. Bellri uses his training suit to defeat the pirate, his superiors capture her familiar-looking mobile suit, and Bellri is immediately starstruck by the dashing pirate lady. Then in the second episode, the ostensible pirate’s teammates attempt to free her from Bellri’s academy-slash-military-base, and Bellri this time ends up using her mobile suit to fight off the attackers. Throw in a mysterious amnesiac girl, a few school buddies, some scattered adults, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a standard mecha drama. But it’s really the way those pieces came together, or didn’t, that both intrigued and distanced me here.
I have been very busy these last couple weekends! Working on the ANN preview guide has meant I’ve had to watch and write about virtually every full-length show that premiered this fall – I believe the only ones we missed were G Reco, Amagi Brilliant Park, and Seven Deadly Sins, and I actually wrote about the first one and took notes on the second anyway. Of course, since all that was for ANN, you guys over here haven’t had heard as much from me. So in light of that, I’ve decided to do a hyper-speed mega-Week in Review rundown of my most summarized thoughts on every goddamn show, complete with links to individual ANN pages where you can find the small essays I wrote on every single one of them. If you want to hear me praise stuff, stick to the top, if you want to hear me tear shit apart, check out the bottom. There’s been a wide, wide range of shows this season, and every one of them has earned a whole bunch of words. LET’S DO THIS.
I WOULD LIKE TO GET OFF THIS RIDE NOW PLEASE. Since my last post, I’ve checked out Parasyte, Daitoshokan no Hitsujitai, Chaika: Avenging Battle, Garo the Animation, Shirobako, Psycho-Pass 2, Your lie in April, and How The Fuck Did They Approve a Show That’s Basically Just One Joke About Twintails. You can check out episodic posts about every single one of these shows on ANN.
Of this group, I strongly recommend Parasyte and Shirobako, also enjoyed Garo and Your lie in April, and was perfectly content with both the Chaika and Psycho-Pass sequels. Daitoshokan and Twintails have essentially no reason for existing, and their continued existence in spite of this is baffling and faintly disturbing. So yeah, Of these eight shows, I actually solidly enjoyed six of them – I’m pretty happy with that ratio!
The ride NEVER EVER ENDS. I have watched a truly madness-inducing quantity of anime, and the fruits of my labors are here for you. Since the last update, I’ve put up first episode reviews for In Search of the Lost Future, Fate/stay night, World Trigger, CROSS ANGE, Wolf Girl and Black Prince, Celestial Method, Rage of Bahamut: Genesis, The Fruit of Grisaia, Gugure! Kokkuri-san, When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace, Laughing Under the Clouds, Akatsuki no Yona, and Trinity Seven. That is way too much goddamn anime.
Of that formidable list, the only shows I’d actually recommend for everyone are Fate/stay night and Rage of Bahamut: Genesis. More genre-specific fare would Celestial Method, Gugure! Kokkuri-san, When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace, and The Fruit of Grisaia. That is, if you like feelsy dramas, 4koma comedies, Haruhi-style club shows, or nicely animated drama/harem-things, those would be my choices respectively. EVERYTHING ELSE WAS PAIN. Nah, just Cross Ange, but seriously – way too much anime. Fortunately, my next update should be more proportionally positive. I’ll let you know!
