Category Archives: Week in Review

Summer 2017 – Week 12 in Review

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With Tsuredure Children having already ended, there really wasn’t all that much anime to sift through this week. We’re entering the seasonal Dead Zone now, where our only comforts are the shows that started awkwardly late, a procession of extended goodbyes that can sometimes stumble all the way into the following season. I’m certainly ready for this unfortunate season to end, but now that we’re at the brink, it’s tough to think that I’ll no longer be getting new weekly installments of My Hero Academia. The show’s second season has been a revelation after the somewhat questionable first act, consistently elevating inherently great material and just generally demonstrating how fun a good shounen adventure can be. With JoJo Part Five nowhere in sight and Hunter x Hunter far in the rear view, my weeks will be cloudier for lacking a great punch-stuff story. Symphogear, please rescue us soon.

Anyway, enough lamenting. Let’s start with the dregs and run this week down!

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Summer 2017 – Week 11 in Review

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It’s time again for the week in review! This week in anime was… acceptable, I guess? When you’re only really hanging any hopes on three shows, the caliber of your week is pretty easy to diagnose. And this particular week, all the things I’m caring about pulled off episodes that were reasonable, but not exceptional. On the plus side, Rick and Morty’s third season continued to impress, offering a replacement for interdimensional cable that easily eclipsed that tradition’s lukewarm reprise. And hey, we’re basically at the end of the season anyway. If this fart of a season wants to go quietly into the night, I won’t complain. Either way, let’s start with the anime frontrunners and run this week down!

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Summer 2017 – Week 10 in Review

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Let’s strap in for the week in review! We’re nearing the end of the season now, but it doesn’t really feel like it, at least from my perspective. With My Hero Academia simply ending a fairly minor arc and Tsuredure Children sticking largely to self-contained skits, Made in Abyss is the only show providing me with all that much closure – and even there, this week’s episode felt more like the introduction to a new stage in Riko’s adventure than anything truly final. But climactic or not, this week’s Abyss was a stunner in all regards, the dramatic payoff to all these weeks of knowing fandom titters. So let’s start right there, and then ramble our way through this week’s choicest offerings!

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Summer 2017 – Week 9 in Review

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The conclusion of Game of Thrones’ mini-season sadly means these week in review posts will be shrinking again. Fortunately, the shows I still have to talk about were pretty much all excellent this week, offering a varied sample of distinctive pleasures. My Hero Academia started off on an exciting new mini-arc, Made in Abyss constructed a “filler episode” that was more satisfying than plenty of its normal episodes, and Tsuredure Children kept up its endearing shenanigans. Really the only outlier was Classroom of the Elite, and we don’t talk about Classroom of the Elite. Let’s start down in the abyss and work our way up through this week in anime!

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Summer 2017 – Week 8 in Review

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With My Hero Academia taking a week off before the final exam arc, there wasn’t all that much anime to actually watch this week. Made in Abyss maintained its usual speedy pacing and Classroom of the Elite was, er, itself, but that’s about all I’ve got to cover. I suppose it’s a good thing this week also had one last episode of Game of Thrones, or I’d be in real trouble filling out a reasonably article-length post for you all. But let’s start at the top with this week’s cartoons, and see where the rambling takes us!

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Summer 2017 – Week 7 in Review

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The anime was all very respectable this week, maintaining an even course without really offering any major highlights or disappointments. Made in Abyss arrived at a necessary training arc, though given this show’s generally speedy pacing, that “arc” may just take one more episode. My Hero Academia was in exposition mode, but it still managed to offer some fun moments with the class. And Classroom of the Elite finally got as dramatically indulgent as it’s apparently always wanted to, topping off a series of grim inter-class showdowns with the introduction of some actual mad scientists. I complained about the show’s super hammy musical cues when I reviewed its first episode, but as it turns out, those musical cues turned out to be the only element of that episode that would truly indicate the show’s nature. But let’s start in the fringes of the abyss, and run this week down!

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Summer 2017 – First Half in Review

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Hey all, and welcome back to the Week in Review. With the summer halfway over, it’s time once again for one of this blog’s more pointless traditions – ranking my overall feelings on the summer’s offerings at the point where it’s least useful to actually make such a ranking. The meaninglessness of this exercise feels even more pronounced this season, since the number of shows I’m watching can be counted on a single hand. I don’t think that’s actually detrimental here, though – if anything, it actually just plays into the general silliness of the system.

That said, considering how little I actually am watching, I’ll still be supplementing today’s post with thoughts on the latest Game of Thrones and all that. I may be struggling mightily to fill my other columns in a season with nothing to watch, but that doesn’t mean you guys have to suffer. Let’s get to it!

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Summer 2017 – Week 5 in Review

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The hits just kept coming this week, a week that answered the desperately unnecessary question “what happens when you’re only watching a couple shows and even those aren’t very good.” This wasn’t exactly a bad week in anime, but when your season is already dangling by a thread, you can’t really afford to have lukewarm performances. The show that overperformed this week was Game of Thrones, so I guess that’ll once again be tying the whole Week in Review room together. We are living through some desperate times here, but I’m gonna fill that goddamn word count somehow.

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Summer 2017 – Week 4 in Review

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Well folks, it’s time for the Week in Review. Once again, my lack of weekly anime watches has me fumbling around for other stuff to write about, but the anime I am watching was pretty strong this week, so I can only slightly complain. My Hero Academia friggin’ nailed the end of the Hero Killer arc, and Made in Abyss is already making the most of its great premise and gorgeous art design. This season may be a show or two short of a full package, but hey, that just means I can work on more Current Projects for everybody. We may be in the midst of a drought, but our backlogs are a vast ocean just waiting to be explored. Anyway, I’ll quit with the doomsaying here, and get work running this week down!

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Summer 2017 – Week 3 in Review

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Hey all, and welcome back to the Week in Review. As I mentioned in last week’s post, this season’s utter dearth of watchable shows has left me without all that much material to riff on, meaning that for now, I’ll be extending the Week in Review to basically anything I’ve been up to media-wise over the last week. Even if airing shows aren’t giving me my fix, I am still a loyal consumer of all that nerd media we use to paper over the holes in our lives, and am happy to share my thoughts with you! But for now, let’s start off with the week’s actual anime hits, and see where the journey takes off.

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