With the summer season entering its twilight hour, everything I’m watching began clearing its throat this week, mostly by taking care of various dramatic minibosses in order to prep for the finale. That resulted in a collection of episodes that weren’t really all that thrilling for their own sake, but still necessary in various ways, and littered with occasional small pleasures. Having each pulled off a sequence of jaw-dropping episodes in their recent history, both Revue Starlight and Planet With unfortunately ended up faltering in their most common ways this week; Revue Starlight through its sometimes shaky characterization and storytelling, and Planet With through its so-so visual execution. Neither of this season’s highlights are perfect shows, but they’re both relentlessly interesting shows, and even their missteps leave me with plenty to talk about. Let’s break down those complaints and more as we run down one more week in anime!
Category Archives: Week in Review
Summer 2018 – Week 9 in Review
As we move towards the final act of the summer season’s various performances, I’m happy to say that both Planet With and Revue Starlight seem squarely aimed at tremendously satisfying climaxes. Well, in Planet With’s case this will be its fourth or fifth tremendously satisfying climax, but I was worried about Starlight at least for a while there, and this week’s episode went a serious distance towards putting my fears to rest. The story’s “villain” is now clear, the show’s internal conflicts have both the immediate dramatic consequences and larger thematic relevance they needed, and the execution of each individual episode somehow seems to actually improve over time. Revue Starlight opened with infinite potential, but it’s only recently hammered down its dramatic solidity, and I couldn’t be happier. But anyway, starting with the old favorite that’s unfortunately turned out to be the runt of this seasonal litter, let’s work our way up and run this week down!
Summer 2018 – Week 8 in Review
Hey folks, and welcome back to another week in review. The anime was the anime this week – one show triumphed with one of its best episodes, another show disappointed with one of its least impressive, and Planet With was as indescribably Planet With as ever. The success story this week was Revue Starlight, which illustrated a shocking revelation regarding the true nature of this competition through a beautifully realized tone piece, giving us an evocative glimpse into the headspace of Starlight’s most mysterious contender. Offering consistently striking layouts and a variety of dramatic reveals, it marked a major step up for the series in terms of narrative tension while also thrilling as its own self-contained vignette. I should probably reserve some of my gushing for the show’s own dedicated segment, though, so let’s hold off there and start with the runt of the weekly litter. It’s time to run this week down!
Summer 2018 – First Half in Review
Welp, the first half of August basically just disappeared in the space of a sneeze or something, so we’ve somehow already arrived at the season’s halfway point. Like last season, I’m not really watching enough airing shows to make any sort of ranking meaningful, and I mean, it’s not like these rankings have ever been meaningful in the first place. Also like last season, I don’t really have any problems with that – I’m much happier watching the shows I genuinely love on an episodic basis, and just dropping the stuff that doesn’t actually thrill me. I have to keep up with at least some seasonal anime for the sake of my actual work, but on the whole, I highly recommend dropping stuff you hope will become or return to being good, and instead check out some shows that people have been loving for years and years.
If we just looked at the airing shows I’d been watching, this would be a pretty bad year for me – the only shows I’ve really loved are After the Rain, Violet Evergarden, Laid-Back Camp, and likely a couple of this season’s shows. But given all the other projects I’ve been working on, this has actually been one of my most rewarding years since I started watching seasonally, offering shows as diverse and fantastic as Princess Tutu, Ojamajo Doremi, Precure Hugtto, and even some non-magical girl shows. The urge to keep up with the airing conversation can definitely be strong, but there’s a wide anime world out there, and I’m still discovering new favorites all the time.
Anyway! Week in Review. I might not be ranking shows any more, but I actually still like the idea of covering my thoughts as a whole at the halfway point, so we’ll be going with a more gentle style of evaluation. With all three of my seasonal titans excelling in their own ways, I’ve got a pretty satisfying spread of visual splendor, thematic poignancy, and just-plain-excellent entertainment. Let’s start with Satoshi Mizukami’s beautiful baby and run this season down!
Summer 2018 – Week 4 in Review
The anime was pretty darn great this week, folks. First off, I settled into an actual watch schedule, which comes out to… well, all of the same stuff I was watching last week. I tried to pick up Hanebado! again, but to be honest, in a year where I’ve been spamming episodes of Chihayafuru nearly every week, it’s really hard to appreciate a show that’s so much worse at sports drama. When the show tried to dip into its trauma drama I pretty much instantly thought “can’t we just fast forward to the cool matches,” and it was at this point that I realized I wasn’t treating the show fairly enough to genuinely engage with it. “If you’re not enjoying something, just watch something else – you will not learn anything critically by continuing to watch it, you’ll just feed your own sense of superiority” is a lesson I’ve tried hard to internalize lately, and I might as well put it into practice here.
Fortunately, while Hanebado! was a bust, Angolmois actually stepped up enough this week that I feel happy continuing it, meaning I’ve got a pretty sturdy schedule. My list is still perilously low on compelling character dramas, but compelling character dramas are just not something anime is willing to give me every season, to my eternal dismay. Until we can bottle and mass produce Nisio Isin stories, I think that’s just a truth I’m going to have to live with – in the meantime, let’s survey what we’ve got and RUN THIS WEEK DOWN!
Summer 2018 – Week 3 in Review
Holy crap it’s already week three. This season’s extremely drawn-out preview schedule, along with my own vast wisdom in going on vacation directly after preview week, mean it’s taken me a quarter of the season to actually get any sort of handle on this season, and at this point I still haven’t really settled on a schedule. I’m almost certainly keeping up with Revue Starlight, My Hero Academia and Planet With are sticking around no matter what, but beyond that it’s basically open war between Angolmois, Banana Fish, Hanebado, and like three different reasonable comedies.
So far, Angolmois is the only one of that second set that I’ve actually caught up on, but it turns out I still had plenty to say about this week’s shows. Starting with the lovable dorks of class 1-A, let’s talk some shows and run this week down!
Summer 2018 – Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective
Well folks, the premieres have mostly crash-landed at this point, and it’s finally time to start sifting through the wreckage. My work on the ANN preview guide means I’ve personally watched basically every non-sequel premiere, and thus have a moral responsibility to share my knowledge, lest anyone else suffer this terrible burden. Every new season comes with somewhere around thirty relevant new productions, and it is absolutely not worth anyone’s (unpaid) time to watch all those shows, so today I’ll be breaking down this season’s premieres into vague tiers for your perusal. As always, I should clarify that this isn’t meant to be a hard, “objective” list or anything – I personally think I’m pretty okay at critiquing narrative/aesthetic craft and whatnot, but we all bring unique and valid perspectives to art, and so my list can’t really amount to much more than “I thought this was pretty cool.” Ultimately, if you’re a fan of some show’s given genre, most anime are at least watchable – but hey, you’re here and reading this, so you might as well check out my thoughts.
You can check out the full list of shows/reviews over at ANN, or just keep reading as we run through the season’s offerings. I should also mention that not everything actually has had its premiere yet, and thus last-minute challengers could still shake up the season (looking at you, Revue Starlight). And finally, this season I’ll be delegating the job of tier designation to Chitanda Eru, who I’m certain will do a phenomenal job. Let’s start with the season’s all stars and run through some premieres!
Summer 2018 – First Impressions, Part Two
Alright, looks like I’ve got at least half an hour or so before the next flood of shows arrives, so let’s take stock with another first impressions post! I am currently utterly overwhelmed by the volume of new releases, but fortunately, it already seems like this season is shaping up to be an unexpected solid one. Pretty much all the shows I was hoping would be good pulled off strong first episodes, but even unexpected contenders like Chio’s School Road and Asobi Asobase have turned out to have plenty to recommend them. As usual, you can click through here to check out the full ANN list, or look below for all of my new scores and links to individual reviews. Let’s get right to it!
Summer 2018 – First Impressions, Part One
The summer season has finally arrived! Normally the advent of a new season is a little bittersweet, since it means saying goodbye to a bunch of other beloved shows, but no-o-o-ooot this time. Not only did this year’s spring season kinda suck generally, but its two best shows, My Hero Academia and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, are continuing on regardless. That means I’ve got basically no regrets coming into this new season, and am fully prepared to be dazzled by whatever comes. So far, “whatever comes” has mostly been HANEBADO and a bunch of easy skips, but hey, that’s how it goes when you’re checking out absolutely everything. As usual, you can check out ANN’s full list of reviews right here, or hit the jump for my individual rankings and links to those specific reviews. Let’s get to it!
Spring 2018 – Week 13 in Review
The spring season was basically over this week, and preview week has already started its unholy charge, so this is gonna be a light and breezy week in anime. We’ve basically just got My Hero Academia and Megalo Box to cover, and that’s such a limited “group” that I can’t even waste a paragraph rambling about the overall tenor of my weekly viewing experience. My Hero Academia was bad, Megalo Box was good, and they are the only shows I have to talk about. Let’s see if we can stretch that summation into a little more substance, and start with the bad news as we RUN THIS WEEK DOWN!