Girls’ Last Tour – Episode 6

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Everyone feeling ready for some poignant, atmospheric adventures in a beautiful decaying world? I certainly hope so, because it is absolutely time for more Girls’ Last Tour. After two episodes that explored such heavy topics as our search for meaning in life and our fear of being forgotten in death, Girls’ Last Tour’s most recent episode shifted its focus, instead exploring such resonant, universal questions as “what if Chi was huge” and “what if Chi was huge and also a fish.”

That was fine with me, to be honest. Girls’ Last Tour was already very satisfying as a warm, quirky travelogue even before it started dabbling in the Big Questions, and this kind of story demands a balance of philosophical inquiry and intimate, relatable character vignettes. The personal stuff is what lends the thematic stuff the weight of emotional investment, and beyond that, Girls’ Last Tour’s little vignettes are just really charming and satisfying in their own right. Watching Chi and Yuu find joy in this strange world, and in each other, expresses Girls’ Last Tour’s empathy and faith in humanity more clearly than any purpose-of-living monologue ever could. Let’s see what mischief they get up to in episode six!

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Rilakkuma and Kaoru – Episode 1

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I don’t think anyone really warned me how stressful and tiring adult life would be. Perhaps some of that might come from having unwisely turned so many of my hobbies into sources of income, but on the whole, I think most of us are unprepared for the compromises, disappointments, and general fatigue of adult living. At a certain point some time in your twenties, the natural energy with which you used to greet the day seems to dry up, with responsible living somehow no longer feeling like enough to keep you moving, and extravagances like excessive drinking leaving you flat-out exhausted. Days start to feel shorter and shorter, filled up with mundane tasks that are so reliable and unending that there’s no real sense of accomplishment in completing them. Your relationships with others begin to shift, forced to accommodate increasingly demanding personal schedules, and often maintained in spite of your actual desire to simply get more sleep. And beyond that, the future doesn’t necessarily offer any call for optimism – our planet and economy have been crumbling for all of my adult life, and it seems naive to imagine things might ever improve.

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Summer 2019 – Week 4 in Review

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I’ve hit my limit, folks. With Vinland Saga actually returning this week, I have officially passed my sustainable viewing schedule capacity, and thus will be performing some harsh cuts between this and next week. Fortunately for all of you, I arrived at that realization only after watching way too many goddamn shows, and so you get to enjoy at least one mega-sized Week in Review, by way of apology for last week’s relatively brief article. The season continues to be goddamn fantastic, with O Maidens, Given, and Granbelm impressing me every week, and Vinland Saga maintaining its usual excellence after its time away. We’ve got a whole bunch of shows to get through, so let’s not waste any more time dawdling. It’s time to break down some cartoons in the Week in Review!

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Why It Works: Conflicts of Color in the Granbelm Anime

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Today on Why It Works, I dug into the smart use of color both in character theming and background design for this season’s excellent Granbelm. Granbelm was an entirely speculative pick for me coming into this season, but it’s turned into one of my top favorites, quickly surpassing the uneven strengths of this season’s more obvious action contenders. Here’s my piece!

Conflicts of Color in the Granbelm Anime

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s – Episode 10

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The end times are coming, folks. With Hayate’s guardians having been either banished or absorbed, and Hayate herself transformed into some kind of human avatar for the Book of Darkness itself, we’ve officially entered the endgame of Nanoha A’s. The show hasn’t overtly revealed the identity of the masked man, but given we’re run out of time to introduce any new characters, there’s simply no one else it could be aside from the admiral. The rules of narrative congruity are pretty insistent on figures like this eventually proving themselves to be known characters; otherwise there would have been no reason to hide his identity in the first place, and the reveal of that identity would carry no dramatic weight at all.

Meanwhile, Fate and Nanoha are trapped in some kind of cramped magical kennel, while our masked man takes their forms in order to turn Hayate against them. This season has basically been about fundamentally decent people talking past each other ever since the beginning, but by deceiving Hayate specifically, A’s seems to have set up the finale to hinge on Hayate’s ability to believe in her friends, and understand that she’s being tricked. Though I’m not normally a fan of devices like this one, since they tend to feel like artificial drama, Hayate’s generosity of spirit has been the fulcrum of A’s drama since the start, so it seems right to conclude by testing that spirit once more. That said, we’re only on episode ten, so there’s clearly a few more bumps in the road before us. Let’s see how this dramatic confrontation ends!

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Ojamajo Doremi Sharp – Episode 2

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Heck yeah folks, it’s time for more Ojamajo Doremi! The Doremi sequel’s first episode was largely taken up by reintroductions and the establishing of a new hook, as our heroines’ despair at relinquishing their wands was soon replaced by trepidation at the idea of actually raising a baby. It was a necessary episode, but also necessarily not a highlight – there was just too much board-establishing work to be done for the episode to also include one of Doremi’s usual madcap adventures or poignant vignettes. But with that episode concluded, we are left with a truly absurd situation, as Doremi and her friends struggle to raise a child who is also a tiny little magical time bomb.

Considering I’d be hesitant to let Doremi take care of a rubber plant, I am eager to see how her stewardship of an actual living baby somehow doesn’t end in disaster. And with introductions done, I’m guessing we’re in for a full episode of baby-related catastrophe, as all our girls struggle with a responsibility greater than any before. In spite of being a perpetual ojamajo, the Queen’s faith in Doremi and her friends is not misplaced – they’re kind and generous people who have grown tremendously over the course of their training, and who probably don’t even realize just how capable and considerate they are. Let’s see how they handle this new adventure in the second episode of Ojamajo Doremi Sharp!

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Princess Tutu – Episode 25

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After twenty-four long episodes of painstakingly restoring the prince’s heart, and a cruel turn where the raven’s poison saw Mytho transforming into some kind of hateful, raven-crossed beast, it is ultimately not Ahiru’s efforts that see Mytho freed and restored. Instead, on the cusp of submitting to the raven entirely, it is Rue’s honest expression of love that frees him. Though Rue was told merely to trick Mytho, her feelings of obligation eventually shifted to affection, and ultimately honest love. Even our lies can contain partial truths, and a lie which is believed can change us until it becomes truth, for better or for worse. Rue’s curse is of the same kind that has tormented Mytho, the same lie that has hung grimly over all our characters, fostered by their creators – the lies we also know as “fiction.”

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Summer 2019 – Week 3 in Review

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The summer season continued its unrelenting barrage of excellence this week, offering far too many good shows for me to keep up with them all. Seriously, I’m not kidding – I’m totally behind on like half the things I’m watching, and should almost certainly have dropped something last week for my own sanity’s sake. Fortunately, it seems like Dr. Stone is already sort of losing its momentum, or at least proving it’s a series better appreciated in manga form – but aside from that, what summer contenders I’ve kept up with remain strong, and I’ve still gotta catch back up with Astra and O Maidens. Let’s break down what I have managed to get to in one more Week in Review!

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Why It Works: So You Just Finished Neon Genesis Evangelion. What’s Next?

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This week on Why It Works, I run through a wide array of recommendations for all those brave souls who’ve just finished their first watch of Neon Genesis Evangelion. There are plenty of shows that directly echo the narrative tropes or iconography of Evangelion, but capturing its underlying appeal is a lot trickier, and I felt I did a fair enough job of offering selections for a variety of Evangelion’s strengths. March comes in like a lion feels like a weirdly appropriate spiritual successor to Evangelion, while other choices like Flip Flappers are more obvious, but still well-worth watching. Anyway, here’s the piece!

So You Just Finished Neon Genesis Evangelion. What’s Next?

Flowers – Le volume sur printemps (Part One)

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There’s something about visual novels that always seems to return me to younger days, and my own high school and high school-adjacent experiences. Of course, I never actually had a high school experience like the one perpetually portrayed in anime and visual novels – I never sat in that back right window seat, and I never developed the passionate, tangled web of romantic longing that seems to define Anime Youth. But the thing is, I actually was in high school at the same time I was watching through many of these properties, and my own memories are thus tethered not just to my physical experiences, but to the aesthetics that informed my view of what high school life is “supposed to be like.”

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