Today on Why It Works, I took advantage of Crunchyroll’s recent slate of acquisitions to rep a few lesser-known but very beautiful shows. It was nice to return to .hack, even if I was just looking for background images, and scouring through Aria episodes convinced me yet again that I really need to find time for that show. There sure are a lot of terrific anime out there.
The New Champions of Atmosphere in the Crunchyroll Catalog
Today I conclude my journey through Monogatari’s various art styles, diving into its evolution in the post-Oishi era. This piece bounces between general style shift appreciation and digging into the actual dramatic effect of Monogatari’s various visual choices, and on the whole I’m pretty happy with it. I hope you enjoy the piece!
Why It Works: A Monogatari Art Exhibition, Part Two
I wouldn’t call myself a person who likes mystery stories. Locked rooms, remote islands, strange killings with no earthly explanation – all of that stuff strikes me as arbitrary in a way I don’t really want to read. Part of it comes down to the fact that such stories are often liars, or at least not tellers of the whole truth. Sherlock Holmes stories are deceivers – Sherlock Holmes himself is not a detective, but a magician. When Sherlock Holmes pulls out a solution, we are astonished not because he used the same information we had in a more elegant or insightful way, but because his brandishing of new, unheard information was so dazzling that we believed in the trick anyway.
Today on Crunchyroll, I’m embarking on another two-parter, this time cataloging the shifting art design of Monogatari. I’ve collected so many damn images of this series that at this point, it’s fun just to sift through my own personal galleries, picking out the best representations of all of Monogatari’s myriad visual styles. This article only gets through the Oishi Monogatari material, but there’s certainly more than enough to dig into there!
Why It Works: A Monogatari Art Exhibition, Part One
Today on Crunchyroll I looked back on the Hero Killer arc, in an article that’s more or less trying to suss out my own feelings as to why this arc felt more effective in anime than in manga. The added material for the anime was all pretty great, but I also just felt the anime polished the Stain battle in a variety of ways, and it was fun to break those things down. Hope you enjoy the piece!
Why It Works: Translating Tension in My Hero Academia
With Crunchyroll having just picked up Shiki’s streaming rights, I felt it was pretty much required for me to write an article hyping the show. Shiki’s one of my all-time favorites, and also one of the shows that’s least-known among those favorites. The show winds up being one of the smarter “ugly nature of mankind” shows I’ve seen in anime, but its immediate strengths were more my focus for this article. Check it out!
Why It Works: The Soul of Horror in Shiki
Aw hell yeah, let’s get crafty. This week’s Why It Works basically uses Tsuredure Children as a jumping-off point to talk about how exactly stories bring dialogue to life, with handy examples from our silly children. Hope you enjoy the piece!
Tsuredure Children and the Mechanics of Dialogue, Part One
This week on Why It Works, I took the opportunity to rep this season’s terrific Tsuredure Children. The show’s consistently excellent dialogue allows it to get away with sequences that would almost certainly feel sterile in a lesser show, and I’m happy to have a chance to show it some support. Anime shorts tend to get ignored by a lot of the community (myself included), but Tsuredure Children is just as strong as any full-length I’m currently watching. I hope you enjoy the piece!
Terminal Fuzzy Wuzzies in Tsuredure Children
Today on Why It Works, it’s time for my regularly-scheduled Crunchyroll recommendations for the season. Amazon picking up the season’s actual highlights did make this one a bit tougher to write, but my tastes are very specific anyway, so it’s not too hard to find shows other people might enjoy. Here’s the piece!
Hell yeah I wrote an article about Symphogear. FUCK yeah. The new season’s streaming situation is still up in the air, but it still felt like the appropriate time to hype the hell out of the previous three seasons. Symphogear is a treasure, and more people deserve to be introduced to its brilliance. SYYYYYMMMMPHOOOOOOOGEAARRRRRRRR.
The Wild Brilliance of Symphogear
