For this week’s Why It Works article, I shamelessly embraced the conclusion of Game of Thrones to try and trick people into watching a bunch of really good anime. My means may have been duplicitous, but my intentions are good, which I feel is at least honoring the spirit of our fondest Westerosi friends. Any opportunity to rep Shinsekai Yori and Bokurano feels like a net positive to me!
Five Shows to Scratch that Game of Thrones Itch!
Today on ANN, I reviewed a show that I fell in love with just a couple years ago, Crest of the Stars. Approaching the space opera genre with thoughtfulness and a clear character-first focus, Crest of the Stars is basically the perfect combination of Legend of Galactic Heroes and Spice and Wolf, a show both staggering in scope and rich in intimate character moments. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend giving it a shot. Here’s my review!
Hell yes folks, we’re back to Scorching Ping Pong Girls! Among the many excellent shows you readers are currently steering me through, Scorching Ping Pong Girls is almost certainly the most dedicated Fun Things Are Fun production, and I truly love it for that. Ping Pong Girls is the kind of show Tsutomu Mizushima likes to make – a loving genre riff defined by consistent high energy and a keen understanding of dramatic fundamentals. Conceits like the various characters’ visual motifs play into the show’s overall sense of genre-savvy irreverence, but Ping Pong Girls isn’t self-aware in order to parodize; it understands the dramatic appeal of great sports drama done right, and it’s here to provide.
With last episode essentially serving as a twenty minute hype session for this episode’s match, I’ve been sitting on my hands and grinding my teeth ever since I finished that one. Ping Pong Girls’ matches have consistently demonstrated a great talent for grounding their drama in clear tactical variables, and the show’s fluidity of action cuts has regularly impressed me as well. With Agari and Kiruka about to clash paddles, let’s dive right back into Scorching Ping Pong Girls!
MAKE WAY CLEAR A SEAT IT’S TIME FOR NANOHA WE’RE STARTING THE SHOW. After our last episode so rudely dangled a potential full-scale battle before our faces, only to spend its full running time detailing the leadup to that battle, I feel I am basically owed an awesome fight sequence this time. Yes, Nanoha has always done that weird thing where its cold opens act as spoiler-heavy previews for the episode to come, but you can’t end a cold open on a fight pose, name your episode something like “New Powers Activate!”, and then regale us with… a perfectly reasonable but decidely non-action packed episode of character setup and exposition.
Grievances about that bait and switch aside, Nanoha A’s has by now established a sturdy platform for faceoffs between our young heroes and these Velka knights, while maintaining a great degree of mystery regarding these knights’ motivation, as well as their relationship with Hayate. My assumption all along has been that unlike Precia, these knights will end up having a pretty reasonable motivation, to go along with their clearly loving counterpoint to Nanoha’s found family. Nanoha’s first season illustrated the diverse potential influences of families in pretty stark terms, so I’m interested in seeing if the show is attempting to illustrate a more subtle distinction this time, or use its general family theme to tackle some other subtopic entirely. With so many characters in the cast at this point, it’s taken a little longer to get through initial setup, but I think A’s is ready to spread its wings. Let’s see some sparks fly!
The first image of Makoto Yukimura’s Planetes features protagonist Hachimaki in a bulky space suit, staring up at nothing, standing on nothing. The earth lies vast and silent beneath him, but his eyes are drawn upwards, towards something we cannot see. Without the earth in frame, the scene would feel almost peaceful; in light of its presence, Hachimaki seems terribly vulnerable, as if he’s suspended on a glass surface over an endless abyss. The shot is likely Planetes’ most defining image; a composition that simultaneously conveys the vastness of space, our fragility as we hang in its grasp, and the mundanity of turning this inspiring, terrifying expanse into your garbage removal workspace.
Well shit you guys, the season’s halfway over. Traditionally, this would be the time where instead of offering reflections on this week’s episodes, I rank the overall field of everything I’ve watching. However, once I started cutting down my seasonal watch schedule to only the shows I was genuinely loving, that became a pretty meaningless exercise. I could rank my viewing schedule, but everything I’m watching is something I’d highly recommend, so what would be the point? In light of that, I instead started to simply summarize my overall impressions of each show so far – but as one commenter pointed out, you can already get a pretty clear view of my overall feelings on a show from my weekly commentary. Given all that, today I’ll be offering… an entirely normal installment of the Week in Review! Yes, that’s right folks, we’ll be celebrating the seasonal halfway point by doing exactly what we always do. I can tell your excitement is already at a fever pitch, so I’ll wrap this intro up now, as we dive into one more extremely normal Week in Review!
Today on Why It Works, I used the reveal of Toi’s backstory as a jumping-off point to explore the searching for a home that dominates all of Ikuhara’s anime productions. It’s nice to be able to put all those hours spent exploring and detailing Penguindrum’s themes to good use, and always a treat to revisit the art design of Ikuhara’s works in general. Here’s the piece!
Searching for Home in the Anime of Kunihiko Ikuhara
Folks, I am very happy to be returning to Girls’ Last Tour! The show’s first episode was equal parts charming slice of life, and, er, I guess more contemplative slice of life? It was essentially a post-apocalyptic travelogue, a subgenre that actually boasts a whole bunch of top-tier anime. Kemono Friends and Kemurikusa both fall in a similar space, while both Haibane Renmei and Sound of the Sky, though they don’t have a specific focus on journeying, capture a similar combination of warm slice of life contrasted against a majestic yet fading larger world.
Slice of life and post-apocalyptic despair might not seem like a natural combination, but the pairing actually makes a lot of sense to me. There are no longer any battles to fight in these worlds – whatever some action hero might have been able to accomplish, their deeds are no longer relevant, as the world has already arrived at its end. Instead, those who survive must focus on what they still have – and in any world, the one thing a broken civilization can’t take from us is each other. In a world gone to ruin, the comfort we can provide each other becomes all that much more crucial, and a natural symbol of how human kindness is ultimately undefeatable. Even in a world in decay, two people can still care about each other, and find comfort in each other’s presence.
Resonant premise aside, Girls’ Last Tour is also just a lovely aesthetic object in its own right, full of evocative backgrounds and tied together with incredibly precise sound design. Let’s see what adventures these girls get up to in episode two!
Toradora’s third episode is largely dedicated to Ryuuji having his preconceptions about his classmate Minori forcefully challenged, first through Taiga’s defense of her close friend, and then through confessions by Minori herself. Trapped in a tool shed with a distressed Minori, he learns that the strength and energy which he sees as an effortless component of Minori’s base nature is actually anything but. Minori isn’t naturally confident or naturally strong; she simply plays the part, putting on an appearance of strength in order to inspire real strength.
This season gets pretty lean when it’s time for a JoJo recap episode, huh? With Bucciaratti’s boys stuck reliving all their most recent traumas, it fell to my other three ongoing productions to keep the peace this week. Fortunately, all three of those shows are pretty darn good, so I wasn’t really left wanting for entertainment either way. Demon Slayer continued to stick to its familiar narrative template, but also persisted in bolstering that template with lots of phenomenal art direction, as well as some theoretical thematic substance. Sarazanmai also stuck to its regular formula, but did a terrific job of fleshing out Toi as a protagonist. And Carole & Tuesday basically shored up any deficiencies in the other two, offering yet another ridiculously charming and far too short collection of capers. All this at greater length, as we break down the highs and lows of another week in anime!