Why It Works: Planet With’s Villains Are Right

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Today on Crunchyroll, I finally took my first stab at a Planet With article, which will hopefully be the first of many. There are a million possible angles to tackle this show from, but I went with a pretty central one to start: the moral ambiguity of the various shifting factions in this very unique show. There are no clear villains in this one – even the friggin’ dragon has his own ethos, as horribly violent as it is. I’m excited to see how alliances shift in the second half!

Planet With’s Villains Are Right

One Piece – Volume 17

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As always, Eiichiro Oda opens One Piece’s seventeenth volume with a brief personal anecdote, one of the many ways this manga creates a personal relationship between reader and storyteller. Oda mentions how he and his assistants often visit a raucous family restaurant, full of loud children and their parents. However, if you visit on Sunday at 7:30, the restaurant is quiet. All children are turned to the television, all eyes on Oda’s One Piece. Oda understands the responsibility inherent in that – that he has an opportunity to teach and inspire, and that few possess the platform he does for reaching young people. There are few jobs more noble or significant than inspiring the next generation’s dreams, and Oda’s understanding of that responsibility is clear in his every page.

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Chihayafuru S2 – Episode 22

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Let’s get back to more Chihayafuru! We are now perilously close to the current end of Chihayafuru’s anime adaptation, but given the show’s been such a profoundly joyful addition to both my personal and professional life over the past year or so, I’m trying to avoid thinking about that. Instead, we’ve got the singles tournament to discuss, where Chihaya just finished besting two opponents left-handed only to run into a Shinobu-shaped wall. With the last episode having ended on Chihaya methodically unwrapping her right hand, it’s clear she knows this is her last round in the tournament – or at least, that without going full strength against Shinobu, she has no chance of fighting Arata. But Chihaya beating Shinobu with a broken finger would be totally absurd in a viewer sense, so regardless of whether or not Chihaya thinks she can win this, her journey ends here.

That’s fine, though – just because Chihaya’s not beating Shinobu doesn’t mean this won’t be an exciting fight (pardon the triple negative). Chihaya played well enough to catch Shinobu’s attention a year ago, and injury or no, her fundamental skills and understanding of the game have improved so significantly over this past year that I can’t imagine Shinobu will be waltzing through this one. Chihaya’s second nationals are leading towards their climax, and I’m thrilled to see it. Let’s hope Chihaya doesn’t hurt herself too badly!

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Princess Tutu – Episode 12

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Princess Tutu’s twelfth opening fable doesn’t require much interpretation to connect it to the show’s narrative: presented as a sort of setting of the stage for the first half finale, it portrays Rue (or Kraehe)’s current actions as bluntly as possible. “Once upon a time, there was a handsome slave. What bound him were not heavy chains, but the princess’s love. Every day, every night, the princess whispers her love to the slave, and the slave responds in kind. Bound body. Bound emotions. The slave or the princess? Which of them is really the one who cannot move?”

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Summer 2018 – First Half in Review

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Welp, the first half of August basically just disappeared in the space of a sneeze or something, so we’ve somehow already arrived at the season’s halfway point. Like last season, I’m not really watching enough airing shows to make any sort of ranking meaningful, and I mean, it’s not like these rankings have ever been meaningful in the first place. Also like last season, I don’t really have any problems with that – I’m much happier watching the shows I genuinely love on an episodic basis, and just dropping the stuff that doesn’t actually thrill me. I have to keep up with at least some seasonal anime for the sake of my actual work, but on the whole, I highly recommend dropping stuff you hope will become or return to being good, and instead check out some shows that people have been loving for years and years.

If we just looked at the airing shows I’d been watching, this would be a pretty bad year for me – the only shows I’ve really loved are After the Rain, Violet Evergarden, Laid-Back Camp, and likely a couple of this season’s shows. But given all the other projects I’ve been working on, this has actually been one of my most rewarding years since I started watching seasonally, offering shows as diverse and fantastic as Princess Tutu, Ojamajo Doremi, Precure Hugtto, and even some non-magical girl shows. The urge to keep up with the airing conversation can definitely be strong, but there’s a wide anime world out there, and I’m still discovering new favorites all the time.

Anyway! Week in Review. I might not be ranking shows any more, but I actually still like the idea of covering my thoughts as a whole at the halfway point, so we’ll be going with a more gentle style of evaluation. With all three of my seasonal titans excelling in their own ways, I’ve got a pretty satisfying spread of visual splendor, thematic poignancy, and just-plain-excellent entertainment. Let’s start with Satoshi Mizukami’s beautiful baby and run this season down!

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Why It Works: My Hero Academia’s Clever Approach to Anime-Original Content

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Today on Crunchyroll, I expanded my vague thoughts on the recent Yaoyorozu episode into a general commentary on how the adaptation is approaching anime-original material. My Hero Academia has been very smart about choosing when and how to embellish on the source material, capitalizing on the fact that the original manga was already full of moments that wouldn’t really mind some elaboration. Adaptation is a complex and fascinating thing, and I’m happy to celebrate shows that handle it well!

My Hero Academia’s Clever Approach to Anime-Original Content

Simoun – Episode 15

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Let’s continue our journey through the captivating Simoun! The show’s last episode was one of its all-time best so far, an unexpectedly focused exploration of the relationship between Morinas and Wapourif that doubled as a very personal articulation of the show’s conflicted thoughts on faith and duty. Once again, the contradictory framing of sybilla as holy icons and sybilla as soldiers resulted in painful friction, this time for Wapourif, as he was forced to grapple with his feelings on both Morinas personally and the nature of the simoun more generally. A tender romance was thus naturally contrasted against a brutally pragmatic order from Dominura, resulting in an episode whose major dramatic beats played into the show’s character arcs, thematic conflicts, and overt narrative all at once. It was a phenomenal episode, and I only hope it’s not the last we see of Morinas and Wapourif growing closer.

That episode was great in its own right, but its implications for Simoun’s ongoing narrative are just as exciting. The episode concluded on Wapourif eventually consenting to dismantle a simoun, which he saw as empty except for its central helices, but which Dominura apparently saw as something truly horrifying. Based on the episode also casually hinting that a sybilla’s body disappears if she dies in combat, it seems reasonable to assume that the sybilla themselves somehow provide fuel for the simoun, in a manner that’s much more gruesomely literal than any of them expected. How this will tie into the fact that simoun work better when their partners are in love, I don’t really know, but I’m excited to continue discovering where all these mysteries lead. Let’s jump right into another episode of Simoun!

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Chihayafuru S2 – Episode 21

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Let’s get back to more Chihayafuru! I know it feels like I’ve been uncharacteristically giddy for a good dozen or so episodes now, but that’s only because I’ve definitely been uncharacteristically giddy holy crap this season has been so much fun. Chihayafuru has always been a warm and engaging show, and I’m clearly weak to many of the things it prioritizes, from its tactically grounded matches to its general love for its own cast, but the second half of this second season has just been one killer match after another, cashing in on dozens of episodes of competitive and personal growth for all our leads. And even after all these match episodes, the excitement still isn’t over – in fact, the show’s last episode was essentially all dedicated to hyping up this next tournament, where all of Chihayafuru’s stars get to demonstrate their own unique strengths.

How this whole individual tournament will shake out, I can’t possibly say – I had a hard enough time gauging where the team tournament was going, and now we’re apparently spectating around fifteen parallel matches at once. It seems easy to guess that the secondary characters’ matches will be reduced to one or two dramatic moments, and obviously Chihaya’s fights will be pretty significant, but beyond that we’ve got a wide array of potential spotlights. Shinobu’s vendetta against team karuta doesn’t seem like it could stir much conflict in an individual setting, but I’d very much enjoy watching her fight against non-Chihaya opponents, particularly if those opponents are people like Megumu or Sudo. It also feels like Nishida is overdue for a little personal drama, but given this is the first time we’ve seen Arata play in nearly forever, I’m guessing he and Taichi will probably stay in focus instead. However it shakes out, we’ve got around twenty competitors we already know well, and separate rank tracks to give a wide swathe of them a real chance at glory. Let’s get right to the Chihayafuru!

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Dead Dead Demon’s DeDeDeDe Destruction, Volume 1 – Review

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Today I reviewed the first volume of Inio Asano’s latest, which is so far looking to be another genuine masterpiece. Not only is Dead Dead Demon’s an incredibly well-observed and poignant character drama, it also feels like one of the most searingly accurate articulations of growing up in the current era that I’ve seen. Kadode and Ontan’s combination of societal fatalism and fierce personal loyalty is an attitude I’ve seen again and again among my peers, and certainly sympathize with. This book really spoke to me, and I hope I captured that in my review.

Dead Dead Demon’s DeDeDeDe Destruction

Ojamajo Doremi – Episode 31

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Let’s settle in for another episode of Ojamajo Doremi! The show’s last episode was pretty much textbook Doremi, balancing goofy adventures within the main cast around a sturdy character study featuring Yamauchi, one more of Doremi’s consistently well-realized and multifaceted classmates. That in turn resolved into a simple but solidly articulated lesson regarding the nature of grief and guilt, offering comfort for anyone who’s said something cruel or regrettable to a loved one in a difficult moment.

Yamauchi’s story was a little more abridged than many of Doremi’s character stories, but there was a very good reason for that: a great deal of the episode was mostly just about reveling in the fun relationships between Doremi’s various classmates. One vignette at a time, Doremi has steadily built up a roster of well over a dozen unique and engaging classmates, and at this point, simply putting a group of them together in a new setting like “graveyard test of courage” offers inherent dramatic rewards all by itself. We know and like all these kids, and throwing one person we know and like next to another one just to see what happens has been a time-tested formula for character drama since characters experienced drama in the first place. Episode twenty-nine (the Doremi horse episode) offered a terrific example of what happens when Doremi just leans into its ensemble nature for madcap thrills – in contrast, episode thirty demonstrated that Doremi’s increasingly ensemble nature can be just as useful for more somber and personal stories. Ojamajo Doremi just becomes richer and richer the more it builds up its larger cast, so I’m happy to see it putting that investment to use, and ready for whatever’s next. It’s time for some mediocre magic with the ojamajos!

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