Hot tip: it turns out if you drop everything you’re watching except for the really great shows, EVERY week in anime is a great week in anime! So it goes for this particular week, where my likely unsurprising decision to finally drop Angolmois means I’m only watching shows I really, really enjoy. Fortunately for you folks, the less I watch, the more I apparently have to say about it – My Hero Academia, Planet With, and Revue Starlight all left me with plenty to talk about, and I’m eager to get to it. Even without a dedicated character drama this season, both Planet With and Revue Starlight are doing their best to give me meaty drama and thematics to sink into, while My Hero Academia continues to offer a thoroughly engaging mix of sturdy fundamentals and creative embellishments. Let’s start out by exploring My Hero Academia’s uniquely clever adaptation choices, and run the highlights of these excellent shows down!
Why It Works: Nichijou is Back on Crunchyroll!
I sure hope the universe never runs out of good reasons for me to ramble about Nichijou. Today I’ve got another solid one, as Nichijou has returned to Crunchyroll, giving me one more excuse to gush about this wonderful show. I genuinely love being an evangelist for my favorites, and Nichijou specifically is a show that I feel could actually have very broad appeal, if only people gave it a chance. The show’s scattershot and often highly experimental approach to comedy means it’s not necessarily always going to work for any given audience member, but it’s so diverse in its comedy styles and so good at all of them that most people who enjoy the concept of laughter should find something to love. Anyway, I’m gushing again already, so let’s just get to the piece!
Breaking News: Nichijou is Back on Crunchyroll!
Precure Hugtto – Episode 1
Holy crap folks, we’re watching some Precure. If you’re not in the know, Precure is short for Pretty Cure, one of the most enduring magical girl franchises of recent years. Pretty Cure isn’t a Madoka or Nanoha-style property aimed at older audiences – like Ojamajo Doremi, it’s genuinely intended to be a show for children. Also like Ojamajo Doremi, it has a pretty sturdy reputation among anime fans as a genuinely great property, with its many seasons varying in quality, but always attracting a solid crowd of western fans.
As one of Toei’s signature series, Pretty Cure has turned out to be the proving ground for a wide variety of talented anime creators, from creative action animators to Rie Matsumoto, whose Heartcatch Pretty Cure film is considered a resounding highlight of her early career. Many key artists on works like One Piece and Dragon Ball have also contributed heavily to Pretty Cure – hell, the show’s first season was directed by the same guy who directed the first two hundred episodes of Dragon Ball Z.
Personally, my own experience with Precure is very limited. I basically know what I know via osmosis from more knowledgeable friends on twitter, and though I’ve long been interested in checking the series out, its substantial length and the implausibility of turning this into a work project made that a tough prospect. Fortunately, you generous readers are picking up the slack this time, and so we’re at least watching through the first episode of Precure’s highly regarded current season. Let’s check out Precure Hugtto!
Chihayafuru S2 – Episode 20
It is absolutely time for more Chihayafuru! We return to the show on the heels of one of its most thrilling episodes of all time, a team tournament finale that saw Chihaya, Taichi, and Nishida all pushing themselves to the absolute breaking point. Quite literally, in Chihaya’s case – her determination to succeed alongside her friends meant she kept playing with either a sprained or genuinely broken finger, compounding her injury and ultimately passing out the moment she won. Granted, Chihaya always passes out when she wins, but an injury is an injury. If this is anything more than a sprain, she likely won’t be able to compete in tomorrow’s singles tournament.
That said, it seems unlikely to me that the show will actually go in that direction. Not only would it be dramatically unsatisfying, as well as a repeat of Arata’s conflict from a few episodes ago, but it feels like the show has been building Shinobu’s situation up with the intent of paying off her character growth during the singles tournament. In order to follow through on the evolving perspective she demonstrated during the team finals, I’m guessing her eventual match against Chihaya will be something of a breakthrough, and possibly even the moment she realizes karuta doesn’t have to be a lonely activity.
Then again, Chihayafuru is nothing if not methodical, so that character turn might have to wait for a future tournament. But as I’ve said before, the nature of professional karuta tournaments means these characters only have so many opportunities to interact, and last episode left Shinobu dangling in a kind of personal arc limbo. I hope you’re okay Chihaya, and I promise that’s not entirely because I just want to see more Shinobu material. Let’s get to the karuta!
Princess Tutu – Episode 11
“Once upon a time, there was a maiden with wings of freedom. The man who loved this maiden thought, ‘if I could just bind those wings, we would never be apart, even for a moment.’ But when the man wrapped the maiden’s wings in a magical shawl, the wings fell off immediately, and the woman died.”
Summer 2018 – Week 4 in Review
The anime was pretty darn great this week, folks. First off, I settled into an actual watch schedule, which comes out to… well, all of the same stuff I was watching last week. I tried to pick up Hanebado! again, but to be honest, in a year where I’ve been spamming episodes of Chihayafuru nearly every week, it’s really hard to appreciate a show that’s so much worse at sports drama. When the show tried to dip into its trauma drama I pretty much instantly thought “can’t we just fast forward to the cool matches,” and it was at this point that I realized I wasn’t treating the show fairly enough to genuinely engage with it. “If you’re not enjoying something, just watch something else – you will not learn anything critically by continuing to watch it, you’ll just feed your own sense of superiority” is a lesson I’ve tried hard to internalize lately, and I might as well put it into practice here.
Fortunately, while Hanebado! was a bust, Angolmois actually stepped up enough this week that I feel happy continuing it, meaning I’ve got a pretty sturdy schedule. My list is still perilously low on compelling character dramas, but compelling character dramas are just not something anime is willing to give me every season, to my eternal dismay. Until we can bottle and mass produce Nisio Isin stories, I think that’s just a truth I’m going to have to live with – in the meantime, let’s survey what we’ve got and RUN THIS WEEK DOWN!
Why It Works: Level Up: The Thrilling Possibilities of 1-A’s Ultimate Moves
My Hero Academia’s leads all got up a power up these last few weeks, which meant it was high time for one of my favorite traditions: enthusiastic tactical analysis of all their latest abilities. I friggin’ love tactics-based action shows, where battles generally adhere to some sort of internal logic, and My Hero Academia is a wonderful example of the form. Let’s get right to it!
Level Up: The Thrilling Possibilities of 1-A’s Ultimate Moves
The Promised Neverland, Volume 2 – Review
Today I’ve got a review of the second Promised Neverland, which dispenses somewhat with the thematic ambitions of the first volume to focus more closely on the tactical mechanics of the kids’ escape. It’s a fine enough volume, but its narrative ambitions make for a somewhat messy union with the shonen formula, as I discuss in my piece. Still very much enjoying the manga, though!
The Promised Neverland, Volume 2
Kuuchuu Buranko – Episode 4
Alright, let’s check back in with Kuuchuu Buranko. Where we last left off, Kuuchuu Buranko/Trapeze was very slowly shaping itself into a relatively watchable show. Unfortunately, Trapeze just isn’t there yet – outside of its wild stylistic digressions, the narrative substance of these episodes is just totally unsatisfying. Its characters are simplistic, its stories aren’t engaging, and its solutions to all of its heroes’ problems don’t make any sense. There is just nothing to draw from this show in an emotional or intellectual sense, outside of how it uses mixed media to… well, use mixed media? Even there, its juxtaposition of various different realities within a single frame doesn’t often lead to any larger dramatic effect beyond “this looks weird” or “this is disorienting” or “this color scheme sure isn’t attractive.” The show reminds me of Mind Game or the first isolated episode of Kyousogiga – visual noise, experimentation seemingly designed only to prompt more focused creators to say “ah, I can see how that could be used in an actual narrative.”
I suppose this takeaway just reflects the fact that I don’t really come to anime, or media in general, for experimentation for its own sake. I love creative shows, but I see experimentation like this as a tool, not a goal – unique images are nice, but if they’re not being used to bolster some meaningful dramatic effect, they’re probably not going to impress me. Concrete Revolutio’s divergent character art echoed its nature as a hero history pastiche that emphasized what a living part of our world heroes are. The Tatami Galaxy brought us into the kaleidoscopic mind of its protagonist, letting us see the world he saw, brimming with possibility. Trapeze hasn’t really reached that point yet, but I suppose we’re still relatively early in the series. Let’s check out episode four!
Chihayafuru S2 – Episode 19
Today we’re continuing our journey through Chihayafuru, as the team tournament finals draw towards an end! With all the establishing work Chihayafuru has recently done, this battle has felt like a validation of nearly every major character’s personal journeys, be it in a small way or a completely worldview-shaking one. While Tsutomu and Tsukuba have already fallen, our remaining three competitors each have their own fire driving them forward, whether it’s Taichi coming to terms with Arata’s presence or Chihaya finally internalizing Kana’s emotive approach to card reading. And of course, this is the last team match of the year – the last chance to shine as a group, and demonstrate their dedication to team karuta.
That “value of team karuta” point reflects what seems to be this match’s most unexpected dramatic focus, its impact on Shinobu. We learned at the end of the first season how karuta had essentially been Shinobu’s only friend, and thus she’d established a close emotional bond with the cards over time. Last episode, that knowledge was given context through learning that the adults in her life had intentionally isolated her from any peers her own age in order to foster that talent, actively forcing her to see karuta as a lonely activity. Given that history, it made perfect sense that Shinobu would have come to resent and eventually disdain team karuta, validating her own unhappy experiences by embracing the idea that team karuta is a fundamentally frivolous activity. If team karuta is bad, Shinobu wasn’t missing out, and her loneliness is just a necessary consequence of her excellence.
Of course, as it turns out, team karuta kicks ass, even if it’s not quite as serious and competitive as solo karuta. Arata framed the value of team karuta as its ability to draw new people into the sport they love, underlining the fact that even Shinobu’s lonely road demands other players – but for Shinobu, the more convincing argument seems to be Chihaya and Rion’s desperate match, a match as high-level and furious as the most competitive singles battles. Chihaya is reaching out to Shinobu without even realizing it, communicating a desire for friendship in the only language Shinobu has ever known. However this battle turns out, I hope Shinobu learns something from this day, and starts to escape her unhappy shell.
Alright, that’s probably more than enough preamble. Let’s dive right into Chihayafuru!