Category Archives: Week in Review

Fall 2019 – Week 5 in Review

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Hey folks, and welcome back to the Week in Review! I’m unfortunately still behind on Vinland Saga, but I think I have a pretty good reason for it this time: I’ve spent the last four days feeling sick as a dog, coughing all through the night, and trying to make up on lost sleep all through the day. I’m feeling somewhat better now, but I’m also behind on basically all of my projects, so Vinland Saga will have to wait until next week.

Fortunately, this week’s other new episodes still gave me plenty to discuss! Legend of the Galactic Heroes is such a rich and politically acute production that each episode prompts a short essay’s worth of reflections, and Stars Align continues to stake a claim as one of the year’s very best dramas. Let’s break down all (er, most) of the latest anime highlights in one more Week in Review!

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Fall 2019 – Week 4 in Review

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Japanese broadcast scheduling issues have left us with an unusually “fun-sized” Week in Review this week, which is a term candy manufacturers use to market their smallest portions of candy, since “this candy has less candy than the other candies” is apparently a bad marketing pitch. All this is to say that only Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Stars Align actually aired this week, so that’s what we’ll be talking about! Fortunately, Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Stars Align are both incredibly good shows – Stars Align has not once let up on either its fluidity of animation or acuity of adolescent perspective, while Legend of the Galactic Heroes only becomes more gripping as it moves into the genuine meat of its drama. Let’s break down these two excellent franchises’ latest attractions in this fun-sized Week in Review!

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Fall 2019 – Week 3 in Review

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Well shit folks, it’s time for the Week in Review. After one more week of racing to catch up on all the shows I’ve left hanging, I believe I’m at this point current on my actual schedule for the season. I finally caught up on Stars Align, which has continued to offer convincing and unexpectedly sharp-edged adolescent drama, and also powered through the remaining Vinland Saga. I’ve also put Blade of the Immortal on hold, which isn’t really a knock against the show itself – pulpy action dramas just aren’t really my thing, and my schedule this season is pretty darn full. I also won’t be covering Chihayafuru here, for basically the opposite reason – Chihayafuru is so much my thing that I’ve already written two separate articles covering its season premiere. With all that sorted out, let’s dive into the highlights of another week in anime!

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Fall 2019 – Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective

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Hello folks, and welcome to hell. Having fought my way through nearly every premiere of the fall season, I’ve weathered injustices and disappointments both familiar and entirely new, all to bring you the freshest possible anime delicacies. There were a huge number of new releases this fall season, but with so many of the season’s high-profile shows being sequels, separating the strongest newcomers from the pack seemed even more arduous than usual. I succeeded, though, and I return to you with arms full of alluring new cartoons. Additionally, many of the shows that are either continuing into the fall or commencing new sequels are also really darn good – if you’re not current on them, I’d highly recommend supplementing your viewing schedule with something like Vinland Saga, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, or Chihayafuru.

As usual, I wrote full length reviews for all of the premieres I’ll be summarizing here, which you can check out over at ANN’s preview guide. I’ll also be including links to each individual review below, as I run down the season’s new prospects from best to worst, and separate them into loose tiers of view-worthiness. Returning to help me define those tiers will be an array of representative Chaika gifs, because everybody loves Chaika and it’s easier to describe gifs than to write funny descriptions anyway. Without further ado, let’s break down the fresh premieres of the fall anime season!

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Fall 2019 – First Impressions, Part Two

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Preview week continues to barrel onward, with each new day offering a fresh handful of dubious anime premieres. I’ll be frank: the season is not looking good at the moment, though that’s pretty much what I expected. Aside from Legend of the Galactic Heroes, nothing has premiered that I actually feel compelled to stick with, in spite of an abundance of “pretty okay” premieres. If anything, this appears to be a season mostly focused on comedy, and anime comedy is rarely my scene. Still, there’s been plenty of perfectly watchable shows so far, and my curmudgeonliness shouldn’t spoil your fun. Here’s my second wave of fall 2019 reviews!

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Fall 2019 – First Impressions, Part One

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Preview week barrels onward, but with only a couple new premieres today, I figured it was past time to take stock of the season so far. The first wave of show releases actually hasn’t been so bad on the whole, though given the highlights include two isekai-riffing comedies, I’m guessing this group probably won’t be impacting my own watch schedule. Still, if you’re looking for comedy, sports drama, or slice of life, we’ve had a few respectable contenders so far – and if you’re looking for garbage, well, there’s been a fair bit of that too. You can check out the full list of reviews right here, or scroll below for my own rankings and links to individual reviews. Let’s get to it!

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Summer 2019 – Week 13 in Review

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At the time this article is posting, I’ll almost certainly be in some sort of half-conscious fugue state, foaming and gnashing my teeth as I fight through yet another mediocre anime premiere. Fortunately, from whatever point in the past I’m actually writing this, I still have enough sanity left to break down the final embers of the summer season. With given already concluded, we’ve only got two shows to cover this time, but let’s try and make the most of them. For the very last time, it’s the Summer 2019 Week in Review!

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Summer 2019 – Week 12 in Review

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Alright folks, pile in, pile in. The summer season isn’t technically over yet, but we’re basically there – Granbelm and Carole & Tuesday still need to pop out their last episodes, but Given is already over, and the fall premieres are just a week ago. That’s frankly a terrifying thought to me, as I feel like I’ve been perpetually trying to catch up this entire season, and have no idea how I’m going to power my way through O Maidens and Vinland Saga. But hey, that’s a problem for another day – for now, I’ve got plenty of rambling thoughts on the week’s cartoons to share with you all. Without further ado, it’s the Week in Review!

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Summer 2019 – Week 11 in Review

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We’re arriving at the season’s endgame now, as all of our summer contenders marshal their forces for their assorted finales. As misunderstandings are cleared up and final stakes are clarified, shows often reveal their most fundamental natures here – the conflict, relationship, or central idea they hold most closely, and are willing to stake their last and most consequential episodes on resolving. Given has turned out to be most fundamentally a romance, surprising no one, while Carole & Tuesday continues to use its efficiently sketched human characters to reflect on modern society in general. And Granbelm, well…

I guess we should start with that one.

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Summer 2019 – Week 10 in Review

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We had two hits and a miss for this week in anime, and boy do I ever have a lot to talk about. While Granbelm continued to flounder in its attempts to make sense of its own wibbly-wobbly worldbuilding, both Given and Carole & Tuesday turned in truly astonishing performances, with Given in particular offering the episode we’ve been awaiting all season. I’m pretty sure both of those shows are going to end up in my top five anime of the year, and I’m loving the fireworks as each of them move towards their hopefully satisfying conclusions. Apparently Given is actually based on a still-ongoing manga, but I could easily see at least this arc resolving itself somewhat cleanly; meanwhile, Carole & Tuesday only seems to exude more and more confidence as it strides towards its end. Let’s get to it and break down some shows!

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