Today on Why It Works, I’ve got a big ol’ pitch for Mob Psycho 100, the terrific spectacle that I’d personally place as the best action show of the last five years. I loved Mob Psycho while it was airing, and I’m very excited to return to it this winter season. It’s nice to have at least one show you’re basically certain is going to kick ass, and Mob Psycho feels as sure a bet as basically anything. Here’s the piece!
It’s Time to Catch Up on the Thrilling Mob Psycho 100!
The opening scene of the Chihayafuru film embodies something utterly fundamental to karuta as a sport: the constant, thrilling sense of tense anticipation. Karuta is not a game of continuous action. Its energy and appeal build up over strained moments of anticipation, waiting for the next card to be called. Karuta embodies the thrill of the silence just before a decisive play in any sport; the ball aloft, players’ eyes trained, all voices hushed as victory and defeat hang in the balance. Karuta bottles that thrill, and unleashes it again and again, as its contenders rush for glory on the tatami mat.
Pack it in folks, it’s time for more Ojamajo Doremi. The show’s last episode featured a welcome return to the show’s most reliable and rewarding mode, as we were introduced to Doremi’s classmate Ryota and his profound love of giant monsters. Like many of Doremi’s best episodes, there was no clear moral hook to Ryota’s tale – it was simply a quiet story about the hurt we can cause each other as friends, the legitimacy of all our passions, and the need to forgive. Its conclusion may have been boosted a bit by the introduction of a magically summoned kaiju, but that didn’t make it any less of a sensitive human story.
That episode also demonstrated that the presence of Onpu and Majo Ruka won’t necessarily be dominating our ongoing narrative. Onpu is basically just another classmate now, and though Majo Ruka is obviously up to no good, whatever good she’s not getting up to is apparently transpiring somewhere else. I’d like to see some stories that rope Onpu more directly into Doremi and the others’ lives, but so far she’s been pretty much an entirely antagonistic figure, and I’m not sure the show is going to make her sympathetic before we formally clash with her and Ruka. In light of that, I’d be fine with basically any direction this episode could take – classic classmate drama, Onpu-centric story that humanizes her a bit more, or direct confrontation with Ruka that also gives Onpu more substance. As long as it’s not more witch frogs, I think I’m good.
Alright, that’s enough preamble. Let’s see what’s in store for Doremi and her long-suffering friends!
Today we return to the so-far excellent Bloom Into You, and take another stab at surviving the teenage experience! The show’s first episode demonstrated a variety of unique strengths, from its attractive backgrounds and purposeful direction to its fairly convincing characterization and dialogue. Yuu’s insecurities and overall personality already feel reasonably well established, though she’s still mostly been characterized in terms of her feelings towards romance. Touko is a bit further away from us, but that’s expected and intentional – episode one was largely from Yuu’s perspective, and Touko is a mystery to Yuu.
The show is also demonstrating an extremely welcome sensitivity when it comes to gay relationships. I’m used to the inherently salacious “this is such a scandal” approach of shows like Citrus or Love To-Lie Angle, but here, two girls potentially being in love is treated with genuine sensitivity. Not only are Yuu and Touko’s feelings treated with respect, but the show has already naturally illustrated the inherent social pressure to conform to your assumed sexuality. Scenes like Yuu’s friends lamenting that her lack of interest in boys means they “can’t have girl talk” demonstrate how young gay people aren’t just beset by out-and-out bullies and bigots; the base assumptions of a heteronormative society can leave us isolated even from our closest friends.
Finally, I’m also very intrigued by Bloom Into You’s fractured relationship with shoujo storytelling. The show opened with Yuu outright declaring her fascination with love as depicted in adolescent fiction, and the first episode constantly presented a negotiation between interrogating shoujo storytelling and outright embracing it for its own purposes (like for Yuu’s fairy tale introduction to Touko). I’m fascinated by the uneasy relationship between not just our lives and our expectations, but also reality and the fictions we make of it, so Bloom Into You’s restless dance with fantasy is also very compelling to me. With all that said, let’s dive into another episode!
We’re into the proving grounds at this point, folks. With the season over halfway over, we’re now entering the episodes that demonstrate whether our seasonal crop are merely capable of pulling off a couple great episodes, no more than a strong aesthetic sensibility, or a genuinely lasting work of fiction. Our various contenders are all answering this question through whatever means they can muster, but so far, it’s the action team-up of Thunderbolt/JoJo and the relentless consistency of Run with the Wind that are setting the pace. Both Gridman and Tsurune are still perfectly engaging shows, but they haven’t really presented that hard sell yet – Tsurune’s emotional drama still feels a little underwritten, while Gridman’s many mysteries haven’t quite congealed into a thrilling whole. Still, it’s the messiness of fiction that’s often most satisfying to write about, and we’ve got plenty to celebrate even in the season’s shakier shows. Let’s run down one more week in anime!
Hell no I won’t stop talking about JoJo. This week’s Why It Works article is basically a piece I was destined to write at some point – a breakdown of the various style shifts apparent in the move from Diamond is Unbreakable to Golden Wind. I was initially hesitant to embrace Golden Wind’s style, particularly after I so adored the compositional glory of Diamond, but the show has absolutely sold its unique identity at this point. New JoJo is grosser and closer and more focused on movement than Diamond, and all those qualities are resulting in a very engaging production. Here’s the piece!
Golden Wind’s Manifesto: The Spectacular Boat Battle of Abbacchio
As we return for another episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, I’m overjoyed to have a serious announcement: the show is actually great now. I was frankly getting somewhat worried through the first few episodes, as the show’s initial aesthetic uniqueness faded into a pretty ho-hum monster of the week formula, but both episode six and episode seven impressed me in clear and very different ways, and I’m now very happy to be genuinely excited about what happens next. It always makes me feel a little guilty when I have negative or deeply mixed feelings on something someone cared enough about to actually support me writing about, and as I’ve said many times, I vastly prefer watching stuff I find genuinely compelling to sending up stuff I find pretty bad, so I’m more than happy to finally be able to bring my full, genuine enthusiasm to this project.
But enough about me and my various complexes – let’s briefly recap what those two episodes did right. In episode six, Nanoha matched the strongest set of layouts it’s yet offered to personal drama which made terrific use of the show’s signature quality, its tendency to let mundane or incidental scenes play out for far longer than similar shows. Episode six was a triumph of form, demonstrating not only that Nanoha absolutely possesses an inspired sense of visual composition, but also that it was able to use its narrative strangeness in genuinely effective ways.
In episode seven, the show demonstrated that its consistent episodic buildup had actually been something of a long con, establishing an expectation of dramatic scale that was swiftly overturned by the formal introduction of the show’s space force. Leaping gracefully between theoretically disparate but ultimately compatible genres, while also fully establishing Fate as a compelling heroine in her own right, Nanoha’s seventh episode went a long way towards investing me in Nanoha’s actual plot, just as six restored my faith in its aesthetic vision. With Fate having returned from her “home” and a new Jewel Seed hanging in the balance, I’m excited to see how Nanoha’s newfound solidity informs this return to Nanoha and Fate’s clashes. Let’s get right to it!
Saturday has come again, and it’s absolutely time for some more Ojamajo Doremi. Doremi has entered a somewhat odd interim phase in its current arc; after Onpu’s dramatic debut and declaration of intent, she’s mostly just hung around, acting occasionally villainous but more often just indifferent to our heroines’ plights. Her nefarious benefactor Majo Ruka obviously has a legitimate stake in sabotaging Rika and her ojamajos, but Onpu mostly just seems down for whatever, and willing to work with any side if it sounds like fun.
In meta-genre terms, Onpu and Ruka’s appearance has kept Doremi focused on fanciful witch world conflicts, from the dramatic race of two episodes ago to the witch frog invasion last week. This makes sense; like with Ruka’s first appearance, it’s difficult to pull off a classic “one of our classmates has a problem”-style episode while also keeping things focused on the inter-witch drama, and so Doremi is temporarily prioritizing its magical worldbuilding over its moral lessons. Unfortunately, these episodes don’t tend to be as strong as Doremi’s standard material – the system of magic in this world is too arbitrary to really invest in, and these episodes tend to lack the satisfying emotional substance or thematic payoffs of the more realistic conflicts. Still, Doremi has always managed a reasonable balance of its various component materials, and I’m guessing this recent swing towards magical malevolence will pay off soon. Let’s see what schemes Ruka and Onpu cook up this time!
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time! Today we’re embarking on another new anime journey, as we explore the first episode of the ongoing Bloom Into You. I actually reviewed this episode once before for the ANN Preview Guide, but those pieces are designed mostly just to be a “is this worth checking out” snapshot, so today I’m happy to revisit it. As I mentioned in that post, my outside knowledge of Bloom Into You is fairly limited – I know it’s a generally well-regarded yuri romance known for its slow pacing and uncommonly sensitive emotional insights, but that’s about it. That’s more than enough for me, to be honest – I’m a sucker for romance and stories that respect and celebrate all our small emotional turns, so I’m very on board for a gentle love story.
As for this anime production, my only experience with director Makoto Katou is 2015’s Beautiful Bones. That show was certainly pretty, but I often felt its use of rainbow and pastel colors essentially overwhelmed the screen, saturating our perspective in a manner that felt more overbearing than evocative. Still, most of Beautiful Bones’ issues were more reflective of its source material than its visual execution, and with a well-regarded manga and veteran composer Jukki Hanada (Love Live!, A Place Further than the Universe, maybe half of KyoAni’s recent productions) handling series composition, I’m excited to see what Katou can really do. Let’s dive right into Bloom Into You!
Dear lord, is the season really halfway over already? Well folks, we’re somehow here, and I think it’s about time to take stock of the season so far. Traditionally, I’ve used these halfway point articles as a way to informally rank all my ongoing shows; more recently, I’ve decided that particular gag has far outlived its theoretical charm, and am now happy just to break down my overall thoughts on each seasonal contender. The seasonal halfway point is a pretty silly time to rank shows, but it’s actually a very reasonable time to more generally assess them; with shimmering premieres long in the past and thrilling finales far in the future, it’s at this point that shows demonstrate their true stamina, their ability to keep us engaged week after week.
As for this particular season, I’m still more than content with my sturdy mix of sports dramas, action spectacles, and SSSS.Gridman’s tokusatsu-slanted weirdness. I’m not sure this season has one highlight I love as much as summer’s Planet With or winter’s Violet Evergarden, but the overall quality of my watch schedule is very high – this is a season marked not by highs and lows, but by perpetual consistency. That doesn’t mean I don’t have much to talk about, of course; even if everything I’m watching is pretty darn good, it’s all pretty darn good in its own unique way. With that, let’s start with this season’s most venerable franchise, and break down Fall 2018!