Category Archives: Episode Writeup

Parasyte – Episode 16

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We finally got some of Parasyte’s energy back this week, with a pretty solid fight sequence and some general character-rearranging back in the city. It’s kind of sad to admit that Parasyte seems to be at its best when it’s just being a visceral action thing, especially since its aesthetics honestly aren’t that great, but but that’s where we’re at. It’s still fun, it still keeps me engaged – it’s just not the show I was hoping it would be.

Anyway. That’s enough moping, this episode was fine. My full ANN review is available here, and my notes are below the cut!

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Yuri Kuma Arashi – Episode 4

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TIME FOR THE BEAR STORM! Also time for the actual storm, as New England is about to get hit by a crazy snow storm and I’m just sitting here like an idiot. Hopefully I can finish the bear storm before the other storm kills my power.

Anyway! Last episode cleared up a whole bunch of stuff regarding the invisible storm, along with giving us some necessary character elaboration for Kureha. We’ve still got a ways to go on the character front, but things are coming together. Incidentally, I ran into this great blog post on a recent Ikuhara interview, which contains lots of interesting details on Ikuhara’s conflicted feelings on creating a show about/for women, his thoughts in selecting Bear Storm’s character designer, and much else. The struggle of making a piece that’s true to an experience you don’t have personal insight into is always a tough one, but Ikuhara’s clearly approaching this with all the help he can find.

But enough about that, it’s time for bears!

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Rolling Girls – Episode 3

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As expected, Rolling Girls eased off the accelerator this week in order to transition into what will likely be its standard format – the girls visit a new country, trouble happens, the girls either solve it or are just sort of there, everyone moves on. I’m totally fine with that format given the fun of Rolling Girls’ aesthetics – but as I say in my post, the real trial here will be in making the leads themselves fun people to follow. The show isn’t there yet, which is a shame, but we’ve still got time.

My full ANN post is available here. Notes below!

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Log Horizon II – Episode 16

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Slow episode this week, as we spent time eating lunch, and then dinner, and then lunch again with Tohya and friends. It always seems a little strange to me that the same show contains both Shiroe’s narrative and the Tohya/Minori stuff – yeah, it’s not like the Shiroe narrative is the height of narrative/thematic complexity, but it feels like this material is aimed at an audience significantly younger than the rest of the show. Are the same people going to enjoy watching Tohya figure out how maps work and also be able to sit still for a twenty minute speech on the double-edged nature of MMO fanaticism? I dunno.

Anyway. Here’s my full ANN writeup on the episode. Somewhat exasperated notes below!

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Parasyte – Episode 15

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Parasyte’s kinda just rambling along at the moment, retreading character points and slowly making its way towards exciting plot beats. There’s just a critical mass a show can reach of touching on certain refrains without further exploring them where it starts to drag, and Parasyte’s about there right now. My eyes were kind of glazed during this episode’s middle sequences, but I fortunately perked up at the ending, as it seems the plot’s starting to kick in again. Go kick some ass, Shinichi. Go do something, for chrissake.

My full ANN post available here. Notes are below!

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Yuri Kuma Arashi – Episode 3

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Time for more gay bears! I did an absurd megapost for last week’s episode, and that’s not sustainable, but I should be able to keep up reasonably-sized writeups on this thing. I mean, it’s really up to Ikuhara, I suppose – I feel like I’ve got a decent handle on the flower/bird/bear imagery at the moment, but who knows where we’ll be five episodes from now. All that we’ve seen up til now could very well be a clever trap, and the bears will end up being representative of late capitalism instead of societally villainized sexuality. Stranger things have happened.

But no use theorizing on how exactly this show will make me look dumb in the future. Let’s get to the bears!

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Rolling Girls – Episodes 1-2

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These were some lovely, lovely episodes. The animation and art design, the fun world, the whole Riot Grrl theme – it’s excellent stuff. I kinda wish we weren’t forced to watch it in Funimation streaming quality, but what can you do. These first two episodes largely just set up the premise, and we still don’t really know what these rolling girls are after, so the real work starts here – but if this show can keep up the idea density and visual flare of its start, we’re in for a fun ride.

My full ANN post is available here. Notes on episode two are below!

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Log Horizon II – Episode 15

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Welp, we’re back with the kids again. This was a slow, slice-of-life style episode, with lots of gags and enjoying food, but it did establish a new character conflict for Isuzu and new overall goal for the younger team. It’s hard to really feel much enthusiasm for a quest that doesn’t have any inherent tension to it, but hopefully the character conflicts will give it some weight. And “go get quest materials to make a bag” is such a boring starting narrative that I have to assume this will go somewhere else eventually… or it could just focus on the concert stuff, I guess.

Anyway. Here’s my ANN post on the episode, and you can check out my rough notes below!

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Parasyte – Episode 14

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This episode felt kinda unfocused, with a bunch of general plot movement taking the place of one focused conflict. The plot movement was decently engaging though, and it’s nice to see basically all our principles continuing to evolve – Shinichi, Migi, and Ryouko all exhibited new wrinkles in their evolution this week, and it’s always pretty great seeing Ryouko handle her baby like a sack of potatoes. Parasyte chugs along.

My full ANN post is available here. Notes below!

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Yuri Kuma Arashi – Episode 2

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Hey guys. I don’t know if I’ll be keeping this up, but I really can’t resist doing a writeup or two for a new Ikuhara show. Almost nothing else in anime lends itself to close reading as consistently and necessarily as his work – he’s basically always constructing a conversation on the level of metaphor and theme, and Yuri Kuma Arashi seems to have almost disposed of the base narrative level entirely in preference to that stuff.

Yuri Kuma Arashi is also a show about bears who are lesbians having fun naked times together. So… yeah. Ikuhara’s definitely decided to embrace his own niche, but I certainly don’t have a problem with that. You can check out my writeup of the first episode if you’d like, as we’re already knee-deep in plenty of potential thematic threads, but who knows where this will all end up. Let’s hang out with some lesbian bears!

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