Hello folks, and welcome again to the madness that is preview week. The premieres are still piling up, and I’ve got a wide array of fresh reviews for your perusal AND DELIGHT. The season is shaping up pretty well so far, on the whole – there haven’t been any major surprises, but nearly everything I was anticipating has offered a fine premiere, and combining that with fall’s continuing stars should make for a solid roster. As usual, you can check out the full list of reviews over here, or scores and links to individual writeups below. Let’s get to it!
Winter 2019 – First Impressions, Part One
Hello folks! The flood of new shows has subsided for a moment, so I think it’s about time to take stock. So far, the winter season is looking to match my expectations pretty neatly – among my “tentatively anticipating” list we’ve had one miss (Boogiepop) and one hit (Dororo), while Mob Psycho 100’s return was even more dazzling than I could have hoped. Aside from that, we’ve got the usual scattering of middle-of-the-road productions, along with what I can only hope are this season’s most conceptually exhausting contenders. It’s a season, basically – I don’t have a fully stocked watch schedule yet, but preview week still has a long, long way to go. As usual, you can check out the full list of ANN previews here, or find my specific scores and links to individual reviews below. Let’s get to it!
Why It Works: Anime to Inspire Your New Year’s Resolution!
Today on Why It Works I’ve got a pretty sentimental article that I’m actually quite proud of, where I run down some recent favorites of mine in the context of potential new year’s resolutions. I have absolutely no time to describe the whole thing though, as I’m still buried in preview week. I hope you enjoy the piece!
Anime to Inspire Your New Year’s Resolution!
Princess Tutu – Episode 19
We open Princess Tutu’s nineteenth episode with a familiar story, one this show seems to have been telling all along. As we peer over blooming flowers towards an eternally closed window, our narrator tells us that “once upon a time, there was a maiden in love. ‘I want to tell my beloved how I feel, but my love might be over the moment I say it.’ Every day she suffered, agonizing this way. She took no meals, and she was unable to even sleep. And finally, she died without ever having been able to communicate her feelings. But the man she loved married another woman and lived happily ever after, without ever even knowing the maiden had existed.”
Top Ten Anime of 2018
Hello folks, and welcome to the end of another dang year. 2018 has been a pretty terrifying and seemingly endless year out in the real world, as empires crumble and we draw ever closer to climate-prompted apocalypse. Fortunately, the world of anime seems largely unperturbed by our coming oblivion, and offered plenty of delights in all sorts of genres throughout this year. As a contributor to Anime News Network’s preview guide, I watched almost every single full-length premiere this year, and did my best to keep up with everything that seemed worth watching. Even then, a few shows managed to slip through the cracks – Bloom Into You will likely earn a spot on this list once I’ve caught up with it, and I still haven’t found the time to watch Hisone and Maso-tan, among other things. In spite of that, I watched a hell of a lot of anime this year, and am eager to share my favorites with you.
The anime this year was so good, in fact, that I actually have a few honorable mentions. First off, the third season of My Hero Academia was a generally excellent time, though it unfortunately peaked hard at the end of its first half. There’s also Megalo Box, which was a thrilling action spectacle that felt just a tad too archetypal for me to truly love. And finally, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure‘s fifth arc has been a wild and creative adventure so far, and would easily make this list in a year with fewer standouts. I’m also not including anime films, both because I feel they don’t really make for a meaningful direct comparison with shows, and also because nobody wants to read a list that’s just Liz and the Blue Bird repeated ten times. With that covered, let’s get to the reason we’re all here. It’s time to run down my top ten anime of 2018!
The Great and Terrible Cycle: Mizukami’s Spirit Circle (Volume One)
Satoshi Mizukami has weathered a long and circuitous road on his way to western acclaim. Though his Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer has long been lauded as a unique, ambitious, and heartfelt twist on the shonen formula, it only received an official translation long after its release, and never received an anime adaptation. Most recently, his Planet With demonstrated both the power and limitations of translating Mizukami’s work to animation, but without that translating into anything approaching wide appeal (in spite of my best efforts). And nestled between those two works, we find the brief, beautiful, and utterly characteristic Spirit Circle.
Ojamajo Doremi – Episode 44
Folks, it’s time for more Doremi. I’m sure you all know the drill at this point – we’re nearly fifty episodes into this endlessly charming and consistently poignant children’s show, and it has demonstrated its many strengths again and again. Though Majo Ruka and Onpu briefly threatened to upend Doremi’s status quo, the show has actually pretty much settled back into its original dynamic, with Onpu essentially just adding occasional barbs of snark or overt antagonism to our girls’ adventures. Meanwhile, Doremi, Aiko, and Hadzuki have arrived at a fairly solid understanding of their magical powers; Doremi may be a screwup who’s only interested in steak, but her spells at least tend to do what she wants them to. In light of this, our main crew have essentially become the magical guardians of their class, successfully solving problems ranging from thorny parental drama to messy breakups with giant monsters. To be honest, it almost feels like things have been going too well for our crew as of late, and that they’re about due for some kind of magical reckoning. The show’s been seeding the encroaching danger of Onpu’s reckless magic usage for a while now, but I also wouldn’t mind if we highlighted some new classmates, either. Doremi is very good at nearly everything it does, and I’ve learned to trust its instincts. Let’s see what’s up in this next episode!
Bloom Into You – Episode 5
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time! Today we’re continuing our journey through Bloom Into You, a thoughtful romance that has been impressing me at every turn. While the show’s first three episodes essentially acted as a self-contained arc setting up the initial relationship and club situation of Yuu and Touko, our most recent episode significantly expanded the scale of our drama, directly roping in new characters like Maki while also hinting at potential conflicts for characters like Sayaka and Koyomi. Yuu and Touko’s feelings are still central, but the scope of this world is clearly expanding, and I’m looking forward to seeing more complex character dynamics develop between all our leads.
At the moment, Maki feels like the biggest question to me. While his desire to be a romantic spectator is to some extent understandable, it still feels like a strange motivation that won’t necessarily lend itself to realistic or sympathetic drama. But given Bloom Into You has handled all its prior conflicts with such thoughtfulness and grace, I have plenty of confidence that Maki will also develop into a multifaceted and at least theoretically sympathetic character. Either way, I’m excited to see whatever’s coming next as we continue our journey through this terrific show!
Fall 2018 – Week 12 in Review
Guys, it is friggin’ December 26th. I got back from holiday events with family mere hours ago, and yet here I still am, heroically typing up the opening paragraph of my Week in Review. Thank god I have such foresight and professionalism that I already wrote most of my episode blurbs – I’m not sure where we’d be if I were any less diligent or forward-thinking. Anyway, as the tenor of this intro may suggest, I am a little preoccupied with end-of-year shenanigans at the moment, and so am content to just straight dump you all into the episodic reflections. I’ve actually got plenty to say this week, so let’s quit with the rambling and get on with the show. It’s time for the Week in Review!
Why It Works: A Kaleidoscope of Feeling: Light and Color in Tsurune
Today for Why It Works, I wrote a craft piece entirely focused on Tsurune’s dazzling use of color and composition in the illustration of its characters’ feelings. I feel like I initially took Tsurune’s tonal strengths for granted, but as the episodes have built up, its ability to consistently evoke a neat balance between its characters’ feelings and the overall tonal austerity of archery has only impressed me more and more. Tsurune is a quietly terrific show, and I’m always happy to talk about it.
A Kaleidoscope of Feeling: Light and Color in Tsurune
